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.)
4 comments:
I agree with you about 'vast majority' only if the majority was truly vast--say 80% or more. I tend to use 'whether or not' when I'm writing but I catch it during a self-edit.
I follow Plain English guidelines when my readers have a low education level or when my documents will be translated.
Hmm - an interesting list.
Some of the tautologies do indeed seem to exhibit redundancy (repeated again; dead corpse; revert back), but others seem to me to have a rhetorical force that is lost without one of the pair (brief moment; join together; mutual cooperation; added bonus).
I must admit I'm finding it difficult to find a coherent and convincing explanation of the distinction I feel between them (and might not the 'between' be redundant after 'distinction'?)
Only just come across your blog, by the way.
Grand stuff.
Hi Ant, thanks for your kind comment.
I totally understand what you are saying about rhetorical force, but am not sure whether (or rather, when) this outweighs any argument against redundancy.
On a slightly different note, I'm not sure that 'repeated again' is always a tautology; it depends on context. For example, I could say 'bananas', repeat myself once, then repeat myself again...
Redundancy needs some better PR. Many of the things we say are redundant - in fact redundancy is a necessary fact of language.
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