I’ve missed blogging. While cleaning up a technical glitch, I kept writing entries and share with you a confession piece.

Reading a stack of my latest blogs, I felt silly how many began with one word: “the”.   A dictionary of words could be used and I grabbed an overused, wimpy, workhorse.

Trying to write without using this word is challenging, a bit like starting my morning with Diet Coke. I once planned to write a novel with each paragraph having similar cadence. That effort lasted for approximately five hundred words. Writing without use of our language’s most commonly used word is tiring. There is a reason English has a collection of disposable small words. I couldn’t even find a definitive article to classify “the” within major parts of speech. Is it a modifier or an adjective? An answer appears mushy.

Dinner is calling. A good friend would like to eat out tonight. To get to my reward for spending thirty minutes on this subject, I close with a commitment to be aware of lazy grabbing of words and create more riveting first sentences.