Why using exciting words can make you a worse writer

 "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."

— Ernest Hemingway

Leilen Shelton, a middle school teacher in Costa Mesa, Calif., might translate that famous dictum from the famously plain-writing Hemingway this way: "All you have to do is write one illuminating, ineluctably verifiable sentence. Author the most perspicacious sentence that you comprehend."

Shelton wrote "Banish Boring Words," a crusade against milquetoast words like "good," "bad," "fun" and "said." Some of her disciples also eschew "go," "run," "happy," "walk" and "see."

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