My favorite English teacher in high school taught me several lessons that have stayed with me. One was, briefly, “Don’t start sentences with ‘the.'”
Another was, “Don’t use ‘very.’ It means nothing.”
Imagine my delight when I found this post.
http://writerswrite.co.za/45-ways-to-avoid-using-the-word-very
sharon p. lynn 
Pretty helpful, thinking about ‘very’ shows it’s (not very ugly) hideous head from time to time (o: