What is redundancy in English and tips to avoid redundancy
Redundancy is the needless repetition of
words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs or ideas.
"Vigorous writing is concise. A
sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary
sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines
and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all
his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in
outline, but that every word tell."
Redundancy is the use of unnecessary words
and unnecessary sentences.
Tips to avoid redundancy
1. Stay with the main idea.
Follow the topic sentence of a paragraph.
Avoid clutter and fluff and keep your writing tight and crisp.
2. Avoid
double negatives.
In
writing double negative is a glaring grammatical error. Double negative unintentionally
conveys a positive sense. The entire meaning changes with the use of double
negative.
“I
don’t want nothing means” “I want something.”
Taking double negatives further, they sometimes
are used intentionally to convey a positive idea in a subtle and indirect way.
Here I would like to introduce the not much heard of figure
of speech ‘litotes’. Pronounce
litotes as lie-tuh-teez
Litotes is a Greek
word meaning ‘simple’. Even though it ends in S, Litotes is a singular noun.
Litotes is an
understatement in which a positive statement is expressed by negating its
opposite. If this definition is creating confusion in your mind, then it is
not bad at all! Not bad means good or OK! Here are a few more examples
of Litotes to make it clear…
Examples of litotes
3. Avoid Pleonasm and Tautology
When we use a word which simply repeats the meaning of another word, it is called
Tautology.
A Pleonasm is a redundant phrase or clause. Pleonasm is where more words than necessary are used to convey an idea.
The word pleonasm comes from the Greek
word pleonasmos, which means “excess,” originally from pleon, meaning “more”;
too much.
Think of Mr. Pleo as using too many words to
introduce or transition an idea, and Mr. Taut as repeating, reiterating, and
restating yourself as Robin Coyle says.
Click to view the article in The Guardian on Litotes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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