How to Eliminate Redundant Words from Your Writing

© 2009-2010 Ugur Akinci
Repeating an idea has its rightful place in article writing, essays, or journalistic writing.
Even if you’re writing a technical article for engineers and scientists it pays to express the main idea once in the header (a must), then in the sub-header, another time in the opening paragraph, and lastly for a fourth time in the concluding paragraph of your article.
But this still does not mean that you should use redundant words that weaken your prose.
Repeating an IDEA does not mean you should also repeat the synonymous WORDS with which you are expressing that idea.
That always leads to clutter and a heavy prose style that is both hard to read and remember.
Here are some examples you should avoid:

• Large in size. (How can anything be large in any other attribution category? “Large” by itself says enough.)
• Advance reservation. (Reservations are never after-the-fact.)
• Ten p.m. in the evening. (Nothing p.m. happens in the morning.)
• Restart again. (If something restarts, it always starts again.)
• Rain activity. (Rain is never inactive.)
• Fire activity. (See above.)
• Our prices are slashed down by 50%. (Have you heard of a price that is slashed up?)
• Pending expectations.
• Heavy in weight.
• Blue in color.
• Loud in sound.
• Triangular in shape.
• High rate of speed. (Or do you just mean “fast”?)