Pet Peeves Make for Easy Posts

My pet peeve for today, class, it the phrase “glossary of terms.”

A glossary is always of terms, so adding “of terms” is unnecessary (read “redundant”). You may, however, use “terms” if you include a limiting adjective. You might say “glossary of unnecessary terms,” for instance.

I like the strip Pajama Diaries. Once a month, though, Terri Libenson makes me cringe with her once-a-month series of that title. Here’s the latest:

If you care to see the whole series, here’s a link to them all. I think.

And “glossary” all by itself is just fine. Harrumpf.

PS: Did you notice that I repeated myself in that sentence just ahead of the comic? I don’t normally do that (it’s redundant), but it was a good chance to use the phrase “once a month” both as a compound adjective, and not.

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Actually several times over the past several years. (Search on redundan or fluff to see more.) Extra words go contrary to my rule about good expository writing, to be concise. So I suppose I don’t really need to mention it again, but this Wrong Hands comic has some good examples of what not to do. Besides, repetition is the mother of learning, right?

Redundant text is a bane of technical writing. It’s when you add words that repeat what you just said. I wrote about this clear back in 2010 here and here. Use the Search…  box near the upper right corner of the site to find several more posts on the subject. That’s how bad redundancy is! Anyway, I just ran into an Adult Children comic that uses some obvious examples to give you the idea.

Those were pretty obvious, but it’s easy to be redundant accidentally. For example, don’t say “do it over again.” Don’t say “return back.” Be alert and you’ll find lots more.

A glossary is a brief, usually specialized, dictionary typically found near the end of a document, that relates to the subject of the document. (A term, by the way, is a word, abbreviation, or acronym related to the subject of the document. A glossary of (ahem) words is a dictionary.)

A hobby horse of mine: Never say “Glossary of Terms”! A glossary contains terms by definition, so including “Terms” in the heading is redundant.

If you specialize the terms in some way, you can mention that, so “Glossary of Acronyms” is okay; so is “Glossary of Computer Terms”; you can even get away with “Glossary of Terms Used in this Document.” But not “Terms” all by itself. Harumpf.

The terms that should go into a glossary are words and abbreviations that relate to the content of the document that also might not be immediately understood (or remembered) by a typical reader. Put it in the glossary even if you define the term in the document. Especially if you define it in the document. How many people do you know who need to be told something only once, eh?

Having said all that, here’s a link to a nice little glossary from Motherboard associated with, well, not a document, but a subculture that you might be familiar with.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacking-glossary

Got any glossaries you care to add to the list? Share a link in the comments.

Redundancy is a bugbear in expository writing. Try not to do it.

Okay, a bugbear is an imaginary monster described by adults to frighten children. Let’s say I’m using the word to help you picture how normally bad it is to repeat concepts unnecessarily. (When you write a word and then define it, I suppose you could call that being redundant, but it’s not bad, especially if your reader needs the definition.)

Related to redundancy are words that are unnecessary even if they don’t exactly repeat something.

Is the plumber here correcting a redundancy or a merely unnecessary word?

I suppose if the problem was that he burned himself if he touched it, you could say it’s a hot water heater…

Okay! The next day Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker’s Dustin comic had a follow-up strip. It also is about unnecessary words. See if you can figure out the missing word. (Actually, I liked the ‘technicality’ quip better.)

(sigh) We grammar curmudgeons are so persecuted…