TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Ask The Tropers

Go To

Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help. It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread for ongoing cleanup projects.

Ask the Tropers:

Trope Related Question:

Make Private (For security bugs or stuff only for moderators)

Amonimus (Sergeant)
2022-06-20 09:50:37

"such as" and "like" are synonymous. Not sure what they're basing of in this case, but they've effectively replaced one "Word Cruft" (it isn't, it's grammatically normal) with another.

For the record, Word Cruft are "filler words" that can be safely removed entirely without affecting the sentence.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Tabs MOD Since: Jan, 2001
2022-06-20 09:52:06

"Such as" is not word cruft.

RandomTroper123 (Not-So-Newbie)
2022-06-20 10:08:18

^Really? It seemed like an unnecessary phrase to me.

Tonwen Since: Dec, 2021
2022-06-20 10:16:15

Removing "such as" in these examples would make them grammatically incorrect, or at best, extremely robotic and awkward to read.

Putting "like" in the slot works too if you are really really picky about 2 more letters though.

Edited by Tonwen "Grandmaster Combat, son!"
Dirtyblue929 Since: Dec, 2012
2022-06-20 10:21:14

Yeah, it seems to me from the Word Cruft page and the above responses that Word Cruft is for instances where you can, theoretically, fully delete the word or phrase from the entry with no replacement, without causing any grammar issues or reducing the amount of information conveyed. Cases where removing the word entirely with no replacement does cause these issues isn't Word Cruft.

That isn't to say there aren't instances where non-Word Cruft can still be an issue, like someone using borderline Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness in how they phrased something, but I wouldn't classify using "such as" instead of "like" as being remotely that serious.

Edited by Dirtyblue929
RandomTroper123 (Not-So-Newbie)
2022-06-20 10:22:15

I was just trying to be more concise, though okay.

Edited by RandomTroper123
Jhimmibhob Since: Dec, 2010
2022-06-20 10:23:07

Not only is "such as" NOT word cruft in the example you give, "like" is historically considered incorrect in such a context. It ought to be reverted.

RandomTroper123 (Not-So-Newbie)
2022-06-20 10:27:19

They're synonyms actually, though I changed it.

EDIT: Updating.

Edited by RandomTroper123
Florestan Since: May, 2015
2022-06-20 11:28:38

Absolutely, "such as" is undoubtedly better than "like" in this context.

Top