COULD YOU (not) REPEAT THAT PLEASE?

I recently read a book where everything was akimbo.� Arms were akimbo, legs were akimbo.� Akimbo appeared on every page.
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����� Okay every page is a slight exaggeration, but akimbo was in every chapter more than once.� I started thinking of the hero in the book as Adam West's posturing Batman persona.
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����� Every writer is guilty of the akimbo type of repetitiveness once in awhile.� Most of the time we're not even aware that we're echoing ourselves.
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����� How do these unconscious akimbo dittos creep into our work?� The English language is so rich with descriptors, why would we rob our manuscripts of the warmth and color that this richness brings to our work?� Simply put -- we're lazy.�
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����� When the afore mentioned writer was feverishly scribbling away on her book, she arrived at a moment when her character took a stance, and the first word that popped into her head was akimbo.� Writing akimbo was easier than it would be to stop the flow of her writing and come up with a different way of saying akimbo.� The only problem is instead of going back to edit out ninety percent of the akimbos, she left them in and it became a distraction to the reader (and humorous to me, which I'm sure wasn't her intention).
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����� Don't let yourself get lazy.� Go through your work and get rid of repetitive words.� Especially if they're words like akimbo that are not used in everyday conversation.
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����� If you need help, go to the Georgetown Linguistics website and use their frequency index tool (see the web address below).� Copy your text into the box provided and click on the "Do it!" button.� This website will give you a list of every word and how many times it was used in your manuscript.�
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����� I would suggest (and this is just my opinion) that if you discover that you've used akimbo more than twenty-nine times, get rid of all but one of them.
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����� By the way akimbo appears 13 times in this passage.� Annoying wasn't it!

Georgetown Linguistics Website:
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/webtools/web_freqs.html

� 2004 Stacy Verdick Case.

Stacy Verdick Case�wrote her first "book" when she was in second grade and hasn't quit writing yet.� She's had numerous article and short stories published and has a couple manuscripts making the rounds.� Her current manuscript, A Grand Murder, is receiving rave reviews, and took third in the Daphne du Maurier contest in the Unpublished Mainstream Mystery category.� Visit Stacy on the web at www.StacyVerdickCase.com.