Your Redundancies Are Laughable
We’ve gotten into some sloppy habits regarding redundancy. While this tendency may not be a major problem in verbal or written communication, it does waste words and the result is often amusing. Unless you’re a comedian, you probably don’t want people chuckling about what you say or write. So, here are some reminders.
- ‘Advance planning’ or ‘planning ahead’ can be easily replaced with ‘planning’. It’s a future activity activity and we would never plan backwards (although that might make our results look better).
- How often does something as simple and innocent as ‘ … 9:00 a.m. Wednesday morning … ‘ creep into your vocabulary? Even during Daylight Savings Time, ‘9:00 a.m.’ is still morning.
- While ‘I will call you tomorrow’ or ‘I will call you by 4:00.’ both make sense, ‘I will call you later’ doesn’t. The verb ‘will call’ is in the future tense already.
- ‘Consensus’ means what most people think, so no need to waste words with ‘consensus of opinion’.
- ‘Each and every’ both mean the same thing, so no need for both. Pick the one you like best.
- Why would we want to say ‘meet together’? Do we ever meet apart? ‘Meet says is all. Same goes for ‘join together’.
- Ever use ‘New innovation’? Are there old innovations? ‘Innovation’ works fine by itself.
So, make a commitment to tighten your word choices, increase your WordPower and consciously avoid such obvious redundancies as ‘currently pending’, ‘exactly the same’, ‘filled to capacity’, ‘few in number’, ‘past history’, ‘refer back’ and, two of my favorites – ‘red in color’ and ‘completely destroyed’. Your readers and listeners will appreciate your efforts, even if they enjoyed the occasional chuckle at your expense.