A Redundancy, I guess

Redundancy is when you say the same thing twice. It’s a sub-type of the error we call a pleonasm, unnecessary words.

You can see the repetition, right?

“Betcha” is a contraction of “I bet you.” So you have “you” twice, right???

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Good writing is concise. That means you got rid of extra words but didn’t get rid of too many words. (Getting rid of too many words is being terse.) Okay, we have a couple synonyms here that involve not being concise. Definitions after the comics.

• Redundancy—needless repetition; “do it over again.”
• Pleonasm—unnecessary words; “on a daily basis” instead of “daily.”
• Tautology—the same thing twice; “he was prepared and ready.”

I’ll let you decide which of these are in the comics.

My experience with small town newspapers tells me that they have a lot of weakness in their proofreading and copy editing departments. Redundancy is a pretty common error.

Redundancy is when you repeat yourself unnecessarily. Here’s today’s example:

In order to provide the building with some tender loving care, Magin enlisted the help of Jackson, Wyoming, business MD Roofing to help tackle some of the work that needed to be put into the house to restore it back to its original state.

“Restore it” is enough. you don’t need “back.”

While I’m being a curmudgeon, I’ll mention that the first two words (“In order”) aren’t necessary, and although the “it” after “restore” is grammatically correct, a noun (the house) is better than a pronoun.

Harrumpf.

Oh. A picture of the place:

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is a pretty good source of intellectual humor.

Do you see the redundancy?

Well, I think it’s funny. When you have some time, look up “quine.” Or maybe “quine’s paradox.” Willard Van Orman Quine invented a type of self-referential sentence.

Being concise is one of my five gold rules about good tech writing. (You can request an essay about those five rules over on the right.) Redundancy, needless repetition, is the opposite of conciseness. Here’s a comic about it. I’d hire her!

The only place for redundancy is poetry.