Have you heard people use the expressions ‘free gift’, ‘advance planning’, ‘blend together’, ‘eradicate completely’, ‘final conclusion’, etc? These are examples of redundant expressions. Redundancy, defined by Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, is superfluous repetition or overlapping of words. The equivalent terms of redundancy are ‘verbosity’ or ‘wordiness’. A good speech or a piece of writing is free from redundancy and verbosity. It is characterised by brevity. Even those who are proficient in English may use redundant expressions because they think it is okay to use such expressions. Some may argue that they use repetitious expressions such as “knowledgeable experts” and “basic necessities” for emphasis. No, these unnecessary words do not serve any purpose other than making speeches and writings longer and not better. Conveying a message with lower word count is better than using more words. It is said that “writing is one activity where simplicity is far, far cleverer than complexity” and therefore one should avoid verbosity and keep writing simple. Recently, I analyzed several presentations and writing assignments and noticed redundancies. Here are the examples:
1. I’m not sure whether she will attend the meeting or not.
2. Each and every one of us should contribute to the staff welfare fund.
3. We received many free gifts on my nephew’s birthday.
4. Altogether there are five in number.
5. He was awake till 12 midnight.
6. My mom may return back to Chennai next week.
7. He should learn from his past experience.
8. ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ is an old proverb.
9. The evidence is sufficient enough to take action against the student.
10. My aunt, a widow woman, is running an NGO.
In the sentences above the phrases in bold are examples of redundancy and verbosity. The meanings of these sentences can be conveyed effectively by omitting certain words in the phrases.
1. I’m not sure whether she will attend the meeting.
2. Each one of us should contribute to the staff welfare fund.
3. We received many gifts on my nephew’s birthday.
4. Altogether there are five students.
5. He was awake till midnight.
6. My mom may return to Chennai next week.
7. He should learn from his experience.
8. ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ is a proverb.
9. The evidence is sufficient to take action against the student.
10. My aunt, a widow, is running an NGO.
Redundancies do not serve any useful purpose and therefore they should be eliminated in everyday speech and writing. Here are more examples of verbosity. By omitting the word or phrase in brackets we can eliminate redundancy:
i) (face) mask
ii) (frozen) ice
iii) (future) plans
iv) (local) residents
v) (new) invention
vi) (safe) haven
vii) spell out (in detail)
viii) (total) destruction
ix) (true) facts
x) (ultimate) goal:
— rayanal@yahoo.co.uk