Weasel Words and Waffling

Feb 6

It was Groundhog Day last week. I don’t have any editing stories about groundhogs*, but I do want to talk about an arguably verminous aspect of writing: weasel words and waffling. Haven’t heard of these terms? Read on to find out.

If someone is “weaseling out” of a situation, they’re avoiding taking responsibility for it. They’re equivocating, or misleading so that they don’t get in trouble. It can be dancing around a subject. They hedge their words so that they won’t be seen as committing to a firm answer to a question. It’s a deliberate action.

Weasel words are words “used in order to evade or retreat from a direct or forthright statement or position.” The term is also used in writing to denote the “extra” words that add to the word count of a text without adding any value. In the UK, I believe, the term “waffle” is also employed for such cases (as in “what’s she on about? It’s just a load of waffle.”)

Waffling is vacillating on an issue. It’s indecision. Someone who waffles doesn’t give a firm answer on a given issue. It could be because the person is concerned about alienating or offending a certain group of readers, or because they don’t actually have enough information at their disposal to make a recommendation. They may want to be seen as unbiased. Whatever the reason, readers will finish the text without knowing the author’s true opinion.

In writing, it’s best to avoid terms of hesitation or uncertainty in your narrative or argument. It takes away from the clarity of the picture you're painting. They’re a form of filtering, which distances your reader from the experience.

In my days of working in a design office, where we wrote many proposals and reports with recommendations, my boss put it this way:

The client is paying you because you're the expert. If you use weasel words like 'I think it might' or 'perhaps if' or ‘you could do this’, they'll think you’re not confident about your opinion, and question your authority. Then they’ll question why they’re paying you.

If you're going to say something, just say it.

This is paraphrased, because he gave me this advice over ten years ago, but that’s the essence.

When producing a nonfiction book, the same applies. Readers are going to buy your book because you have expertise in your field. Whether you have studied the subject and come up with new theories, or you’re drawing from the wealth of your personal experience, readers are coming to you for knowledge. They want to be confident that you know what you’re talking about, and that you can communicate that information to them clearly. This is not the time for false modesty of diffidence. You’ve done your research, checked your sources, performed your analysis, and these are your results. (If you haven’t made certain of your information, you’re book’s not ready to be finished yet.) You can demonstrate multiple sides to an argument, but it should be clear to the reader that you’re presenting it all with your end goal in mind.

How this translates into fiction, rather than business or nonfiction, is that the narrator is the expert. The reader is relying on them to tell the story, and expects them to be confident (even if it turns out later that they're wrong, or they were lying). If the narrator uses a lot of equivocating, weasel words, or hedging terms, it undermines their credibility and pushes the reader out of the story. Much like when watching a politician soapboxing for extended periods without actually committing to anything (plausible deniability!), the reader will become bored or irritated. They might go so far as to abandon the book.

When talking about “tightening up” a text, much of that can be done by eliminating the waffle and weasel words. There is some good advice on how to do this in the book 5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing. The authors lay it out better than I can here, but examples include:

switching “weak” dialogue tags or action beats for clearer, more active verbs. For instance, instead of “said softly,” try “whispered.” Likewise, instead of “ran really fast,” try “sprinted.” Adverbs have a place, but not as many places as they used to. They’re out of fashion.
“Telling” words, that push the reader out of the experience. For example, instead of “I mused over the question of whether he would be home,” try the more direct “would he be home?” You’ve saved seven words that were slowing down your pacing. Since you’re dealing with first person POV in this case, the reader already knows that, by definition, thoughts not uttered are musings in the character’s mind. It doesn’t need to be stated.

That is not to say to never use hesitation in literature. Uncertainty has a place for fiction writers. Doubt is a part of the human condition, and authors use equivocation or hesitancy to display their characters’ fears and insecurities, to confuse or confound adversaries, or to demonstrate a character’s dishonesty. However, when the character is serving as the narrator, they need to tell the story with confidence. Main characters who are constantly second-guessing themselves (waffling) and skirting around commitments or taking sides (weaseling) will come across as wishy-washy and weak. Especially when the story is told in past tense (i.e. after the fact), the narrator clearly has all of the information about the plot that can be obtained. Musings, opinions and asides are fine, but do, please, maintain a confident tone.

What do you think?

*I have made an informal study of groundhogs, over the years, especially the differences between urban and rural populations in the greater Ottawa area, and have several observations and anecdotes, should anyone wish to discuss. They just don’t relate to editing. ;)

Sources:

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann, courtesy of unsplash.com

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weasel

weasel, 2 of 2

verb

weaseled; weaseling ˈwēz-liŋ ˈwē-zə-

intransitive verb

1: to use weasel words : EQUIVOCATE

2: to escape from or evade a situation or obligation

—often used with out

transitive verb

: to manipulate shiftily