That

​“That”
‘That’ can be a pronoun, as in ‘that is a good idea.’
‘That’ can be a determiner, as in ‘he lived in Chicago at that time.’
‘That’ can be an adverb, as in ‘I would not go that far.’
‘That’ can be a conjunction, as in ‘she said that she was satisfied.’
 
That’s a lot of uses for a little four letter word.  In working on the writing style for the manuscript for my third novel I noticed a lot of “that’s”.  It was disturbing.  In almost every case “that” added nothing to the sentence and because there were so many of them, it was distracting.
I decided to weed out every unnecessary “that”, which meant about 98% of them.  In the first 20 pages of my manuscript I found more than 30 “that’s” Can you believe it?
This has been a self-revelation, a disturbing one.  I am committed to search and destroy every “that” in my manuscript no matter how long it takes.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any explanation for my infatuation with “that”.  It happens, I guess, it sneaks up on a writer without you taking notice.
My advice, do a search of common words in your writing.  You too may discover you have that problem.