The 40 tells · Words · No. 15
Why "foster" makes writing sound machine-made
Flagged "Foster"
"Foster collaboration", "garner attention", "bolster your presence". These are formal verbs that most people only use in writing, and they turn up all over machine-written text.
Plain verbs read faster and sound like a person.
Before
Our workshops foster collaboration and bolster team morale.
After
Teams spend a day building one thing together. Most leave with a working prototype.
The fix
Swap it for the concrete thing. What does it do, in words a buyer can check?
Write this instead
- build
- get
- grow
- help
- or what actually happens
What the checker matches
Any of these, in any case:
- foster
- fosters
- fostering
- garner
- garners
- garnered
- bolster
- bolsters