Prose checks › Crutch words Pro
Prose check: your crutch wordsThe words you lean on without noticing.
Mine turned out to be “even”: 256 times in my novel. (And “eyes”: 273. 🤣) Yours might be “looked”, or “suddenly”. Falcontext measures how often you use 87 common crutch words against published fiction, and only shows you the ones you really lean on.
In Falcontext’s Edit tab, Your crutch words is one part of Repeated and crutch words, with repeated words nearby. Each part has its own light, and the worst sets the check’s.
What are crutch words?
The words you reach for again and again.
A softener: just, quite, rather, almost. An intensifier: really, very, completely. A hedge: perhaps, probably, somehow. A time word: suddenly, then, finally. Or fiction’s own favourites: looked, turned, stared, eyes, breath, heart.
Each one is fine. Forty on a page isn’t.
Why not a list of words to cut?
Because published novels use “looked” and “then” all the time. Cutting them all would be weird.
The question isn’t whether you use them. It’s whether you use them more.
How Falcontext checks crutch words
It watches 87 common ones. For each one, it knows how often English fiction published 2000–2019 uses it (from Google Books).
Use one at least twice as often as published fiction, and at least five times, and it’s one of yours. Forms count together: look, looks, looked and looking are one word.
Guidelines, not rules. Knowing yours is the point. Cutting them is optional.
- Finds
- Common crutch words you use at least twice as often as published fiction (and at least five times), forms counted together, dialogue left out. Each one is marked in your text.
- Traffic light
- 0–2 found
- 3–6
- 7 or more
- Meant it? A running joke, a narrator’s voice: ignore the word and it stops counting.
- Want to watch a word that isn’t on the list? Falcontext can track any word you choose.
Your crutch words are what the guide’s fourth pass is about: the words you lean on, the ones you use most shown first.
What’s yours? (Mine’s “even”.)
Many crutch words are filler words: just, very, quite. Filler words vs filter words.
Questions about crutch words.
What are crutch words in writing?
Words a writer overuses without noticing, such as just, really, suddenly, looked or turned. Published novels use them too, so Falcontext flags one only when you use it at least twice as often as published fiction does.
How does Falcontext decide a word is overused?
It compares how often you use each of 87 common crutch words with how often English fiction published 2000–2019 uses it (Google Books Ngram data). At least twice as often, and at least five times, makes it a crutch word. Dialogue isn’t counted.
Is the crutch word checker free?
Crutch words are a Pro check ($1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, with a free trial). On the free plan it still shows green, orange or red, so you know whether there’s something to find.
Related checks
In Falcontext
Your next chapter starts today.
Set a goal, open your draft and let the checks look over your shoulder.
Add to Chrome – it's freeOr get the desktop app or Perch, the web app.
Free forever plan · No sign-up · Pro from $1.99/month with a free trial