by Jennie Ruby
How many redundancies can you spot in the paragraph below?
You walk up to an ATM machine and enter your PIN number. While you are there, you print out a hard copy of your statement so you can check on the past history of your account. The reason you need a printout is because your total balance seems too high, and you want to make absolutely certain your rent check has cleared.
Some of the redundancies may be obvious, but others have become such habitual usage that it sounds funny to us to eliminate them. Redundant expressions may occur partly because we want to make sure we are understood. If our reader could miss one word, we add a second as a backup. Others probably occur because we have forgotten what an acronym stands for, or we have forgotten what we said earlier in the sentence.
As the classic book on writing style, Strunk & White says: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence must have no unnecessary words; a paragraph, no unnecessary sentences." But should redundancies always be eliminated? We would love to hear your thoughts on that question.
Plus, send in a list of the redundancies in the ATM paragraph above, along with a rewrite of the paragraph. Winning entries will be announced next week.
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.