Plain English Guide: tautologies

A regular Engine Room reader who has asked to remain anonymous has emailed me a local government 'Plain English Guide'. At 27 pages, it is perhaps a little long-winded but then again it is still shorter than the style guide and glossary of the magazine that I work for.

I was particularly struck by its list of tautologies (or as the guide says, "words that mean the same thing"). It includes:

  • free gift
  • new innovation
  • pair of twins
  • past history
  • vast majority
  • brief moment
  • circle round
  • join together
  • repeated again
  • mutual co-operation
  • whether or not
  • a dead corpse
  • added bonus
  • revert back
  • future prospects
  • early beginnings
  • unite together

Now, I'm not sure that quite all of these are actually tautologous. 'Vast majority', for example – it is possible for a political party to have a slim majority, so I don't have a problem with vast majority either. What do you reckon?

And on another note, I remember a (former) member of the news desk here who was convinced it was incorrect to use the word 'whether' without following it with 'or not' . All I can imagine is that he fell under the influence of an ill-informed or malicious teacher at some point in his schooling...


(By the way – yesterday's question was correctly answered by TootsNYC, so read the comments if you were stumped.)