Sunday, September 14, 2014

The 11th Secret

The 11th Secret to Writing Well: Avoid Redundancy

The redundant, unnecessary, superfluous, inessential, verbose tendency many writers often have is a huge problem than is a propensity to use more words than are necessarily needed to get your ideas across.

This is an exaggeration, but reiteration of something already stated or implied is one of the quickest ways to alienate readers. It comes across as an insult to their intelligence. It is important to ask yourself What is the point of each word, sentence, and paragraph? as you write and revise. Cover something once, and move on. If an idea has been noted in more than one way, it can be integrated somehow, or better yet, usually eliminated entirely.

Notice the end of that last sentence. If something is being eliminated, it is assumed that it is to do so entirely. Entirely can be eliminated.

Watch for those itsy bitsy spiders that dash quickly across the floor as they are chased by baby kittens. Tiny spiders that dash across the floor when chased by kittens will reach safety fine. We don't need to overwork the simplicity of definite word choice at the expense of needless wordiness.

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The first instance of bad grammar I discovered this week was at the Clinton Taco Time. A sign was posted to the drive through speaker stating:
PLEASE!
STOP
AN
ORDER
HERE
Aside from the awkward exclamation point position, if I changed it to a sentence, it would be, "Please, stop and order here!"

The second grammatical error I found is from the blog MindBodyGreen.
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-9748/fruit-when-to-eat-it-when-to-avoid-it.html
The opening paragraph of the article Fruit: When to Eat it and When to Avoid It is confusing because of poor sentence construction. It states, "I love fruit and eat it everyday but am now learning there are specific times we should eat in relation to how we digest it. When you eat fruit, it enters the stomach and digestive juices as alkaline and the food begins to spoil and does not digest properly. This is why it's important to eat fruit in an order that supports digestion."

With some comma placement issues and rearrangement of ideas it makes a little more sense.

I love fruit and eat it every day. However, there are specific times we should eat it in relation to how we digest it. When you eat fruit it enters the stomach as alkaline, the food begins to spoil, and does not digest properly. This is why it's important to eat fruit in an order that supports digestion.
(I'm still not sure what is meant by fruit entering the "stomach and digestive juices as alkaline and the food begins to spoil and does not digest properly," but fortunately the rest of the article does set out some guidelines for proper fruit consumption if you're into avoiding whatever the article is talking about).

The third error I came across on a Facebook feed. I found it funny not only because I'm the type of person who has to watch scary movies peeking through fingers at the creepy parts, but there's a whole slew of grammar errors happening.
The comma is in the wrong place, 'till should be until, a.m. is not punctuated, and watching is misspelled. Here's how I would write it as a sentence. I don't always watch scary movies, but when I do I'm up until 2 a.m. watching Disney princess movies to calm me down. 

1 comment:

  1. Stacy, this was a great post. I agree with your 11th rule; redundancy is annoying and useless in the written and spoken word. I find that it harms the speaker/writer's credibility.

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