“Verbage” Is Not a Word
If you’ve ever had to pause to ask yourself, “Hmm, what’s the right word here … verbiage or verbiage, ” I have the perfect mnemonic trick for you: Verbage is trash .
On the other hand, verbiage is a noun that refers to spoken or written speech that uses too many words. It would be superfluous to say that something is “too verbose”, because verbiage is verbosity; is it a long speech or some kind of composition.
Example : “It is difficult to decipher simple facts because they are hidden under many layers of misleading verbiage.”
“Verbage” is just a common misspelling mistake because maybe some people don’t pronounce the “i” or prefer the look of it. But this is wrong, so stop using it.
For those of you who are already preparing to comment and tell me how the language is evolving, and if the mistake is common enough, it turns into a word, blah blah blah, I authorize Maeve Maddox in the Daily Writing Tips to correct you:
Dictionary.com’s definition, which describes verbage as assimilating verbiage with garbage , is not worth the attention of authors whose goal is to write a form of Standard English. We already have a variety of words that can convey the uselessness of words, one of which is garbage .
See? Verbage is garbage, and we already have a lot of garbage.