Very confident

Being slightly pointless is a retreat from confidence, but it’s only one side of a dangerous coin. The other side is being very confident.

You want to get your point across with vigour but instead of searching for the precise, powerful word, you add a qualifier like very, really, or too.

• They were very rude
• I was really tired
• The water was too hot
  
  

Obviously, whatever word follows these qualifiers isn’t doing a good enough job. To change that just do some literary maths.

• very + rude = coarse
• really + tired = drained
• too + hot = blistering
  
  

It’s more forgivable in speech where editing is live, and it’s why we shouldn’t write precisely how we speak. But we certainly have time to find and delete them from our writing.

Don't worry too much about hunting for these improvements on the second roll of the dice. On rolls 12 and 24, you'll turn these really weak frail twos into very strong solid sixes.