The Literary Imaginarium

Needless Words
Perhaps no one has ever captured (in 63 words!) the essence of brevity in writing as well as Willian Strunk, Jr.; "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, paragraph or 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,"


Redundancies
Redundancy occurs when a writer needlessly repeats a word or idea. It is redundant to speak of a "beginner lacking experience". The word "beginner" by itself implies lack of experience. Redundant words or phrases can eliminated without changing the meaning of the sentence.


EXAMPLES:


REDUNDANT          BETTER


advance notice          notice
any and all                  any
ask the question        question
big in size                   big
combined together    combined
completely full          full
end result                  result
past history               history
reiterate again          reiterate
reflect back               reflect
repeat again              repeat
sadly tragic                tragic
true facts                    facts
until such a time         until
return back                return
sink down                   sink
whether or not           whether
young juvenile           juvenile


Excerpt from: The Little Red Writing Book
By: Brandon Royal
Writer's Digest Books Copyright 2004