What are stop words and how can they ruin even interesting texts? How can you rid a text of unnecessary words? Let's understand this.

What are stop words

Stop words are individual words or phrases that carry no information. They can be comfortably removed from the text, and the overall semantic load will not change. Stop words include pronouns, particles, and some verbs.

What stop words influence

Stop words affect the informativeness of the text. For example, in content marketing, it is recommended to use stop words as rarely as possible so that the text is easier to perceive. The more fluff (or noise) in the article, the harder it is to read. You can't completely get rid of stop words, but you can reduce the wordiness.

A large number of stop words also negatively affect the appearance of material in search results. The more fluff, the worse articles rank, which means they will not appear in top positions in search results.

Note: If you need to include a stop word in a search query, use special symbols. For example, "+buy +phone +in +Moscow." If there is no "+" operator before a word or phrase in the query, the search engine can replace it with any other. Then, for the request "buy +phone in Moscow," you will see answers like "sell," "in Kaluga," "cheap," and so on.

Brief list of stop words

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Try to use stop words in texts as rarely as possible. Typically, stop words include:

• particles, conjunctions, prepositions (for, therefore, then, in order to, etc.);
• pronouns (I, we, his, which, all, such, etc.);
• interjections (ah, oh, sorry, etc.);
• introductory words (by the way, let's assume, so to speak, in general, thus, fortunately, etc.);
• cliché words (actively developing, individual approach, gain trust, in the best traditions, at a fast pace, etc.);
• time parasites (nowadays, now, at present, nowadays, etc.);
• modal words (may, must, need, etc.);
• indefinite ones (some, something, somewhere, approximately, roughly, etc.);
• evaluative words (luxurious, expensive, delightful, cheap, etc.);
• amplifying words (very, strongly, most, most of all);
• deverbal nouns (start implementation, engage in activities, etc.);
• slang words (fix, chill, crush, cringe, etc.);
• complex speech constructions that are difficult for readers to perceive.

Each search engine has its own list of stop words with thousands of positions. The list is constantly being supplemented and changed, and it is impossible to completely rid an article of all stop words, and there's no need to: without them, the text will become dry and incomplete. It's better to clean it from clutter, leaving an optimal number of stop words. You can also make a Postmypost AI request, and it will write a beautiful text without unnecessary fluff.

How to check the text for stop words

Services for semantic analysis help determine the wordiness (or verbosity) of an article. They find stop words in the text, count them, highlight them, and determine other text parameters.

Text.ru

Text.ru determines nausea and wordiness online, finds spelling errors, conducts an SEO check, and analyzes the uniqueness of the text.

Glvrd.ru

Glvrd.ru highlights stop words, bureaucratic language, clichés, generalizations, and explains why you shouldn't use them. It rates from 0 to 10 points.

Advego.com

Advego.com conducts semantic analysis of texts, determines the number of characters, wordiness, spamming, and nausea.

Allowable text wordiness

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Text wordiness is usually indicated as a percentage. Different services specify their permissible indicators. Thus, Text.ru considers up to 15% water to be normal, and 15-30% - an excessive noise level.

Advego considers up to 63% water to be normal, and 64-75% - excessive.

For different styles, text wordiness can also vary. For example, news should be as dry as possible, while artistic texts can add some "water."