Steven D'Aprano wrote: > blacklist = set(['THE']) # in Python 3, use {'THE'} Note that set literals were backported to Python 2.7: $ python Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 23 2017, 15:49:48) [GCC 4.8.4] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> {"foo"} set(['foo'])