added bonus
advance planning, advance warning
all-time record
As well, one doesn’t set a “new record.” One merely sets a record.
assless chaps
The garment, that is. Not fellows lacking in dorsal embonpoint. I’m not sure how often this will come up in your writing—or in your life—but chaps are, by definition, assless. Look at a cowboy. From behind.
ATM machine
ATM = automated teller machine, which, one might argue and win the argument, is redundant enough as it is.
blend together
cameo appearance, cameo role
capitol building
closed fist
A closed hand is, I suppose, a thing. But as there are no open fists, neither are there closed ones.
close proximity
Like “from whence” (see below), “close proximity” can be defended simply by its lengthy history of turning up in competent prose, but to be proximate is, inarguably, to be close, so if you need to emphasize intimacy, perhaps find a less galumphing way to do it.
CNN network
CNN = Cable News Network.
consensus of opinion, general consensus
The word “consensus” has the “general” and the “of opinion” baked right in. It doesn’t need any help.
continue on
The airlines like it. I don’t.
crisis situation
depreciated in value
direct confrontation
disappear from sight
earlier in time
end product
end result
I can appreciate the difference between a midprogress result and an ultimate result, but “end result” is cloddish.
equally as, equally as
Use one or the other, not both. Alan Jay Lerner’s “I’d be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling / than to ever let a woman in my life,” from My Fair Lady, is often pointed out by aficionados as one of the prime grammatical calamities in musical theater lyric writing—not only the “equally as” but that “than” that should certainly be an “as.” That the singer of the lyric is the persnickety grammarian Henry Higgins only adds to the ironic fun.
erupt (or explode) violently
exact same
To be sure, “exact same” is redundant. To be sure, I still say it and write it.
fall down
What are you going to do, fall up?
fellow countryman
fetch back
To fetch something is not merely to go get it but to go get it and return with it to the starting place. Ask a dog.
few in number
fiction novel
Appalling. A novel is a work of fiction. That’s why it’s called a novel.
That said, “nonfiction novel” is not the oxymoron it might at first seem. The term refers to the genre pioneered—though not, as is occasionally averred, invented—by Truman Capote with In Cold Blood, that of the work of nonfiction written novelistically.
I once—and, happily, to date, only once—encountered the term “prose novel,” which is as brain-clonking a redundancy as “fiction novel” but which I eventually realized was meant as a retronym:*1 In a world full of graphic novels, the user of the term had apparently decided, one must identify a work of fiction containing a hundred thousand words, give or take, but lacking pictures as a “prose novel.”
Decency forbids. One need no more refer to a novel as a “prose novel” than one need refer to a concoction of a lot of gin and as little vermouth as is humanly possible as a “gin martini.” Martinis, by definition, are made with gin. The burden is on misguided people who make them with vodka to append those two extra syllables.
Lately one encounters people referring to any full-length book, even a work of nonfiction, as a novel. That has to stop.
final outcome
follow after
free gift
A classic of the redundancy genre, much beloved of retailers and advertisers.
from whence
Whence means “from where,” which makes “from whence” pretty damn redundant. Still, the phrase has a lot of history, including, from the King James Version of the Bible, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” So I suppose you can write “from whence” if you’re also talking about thine eyes and the place your help is comething from.
For a dazzling (and purposeful) use of “from whence,” consider Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls lyric “Take back your mink / to from whence it came”—gorgeously appropriate for the tawdry nightclub number in which it’s sung.
frontispiece illustration
A frontispiece is an illustration immediately preceding, and generally facing, a book’s title page.
full gamut
A gamut is the full range or scope of something, so the word needs no modifier. Ditto “complete range,” “broad spectrum,” “full extent,” and their cousins.
fuse together
future plans
gather together
Yes, I know: “We Gather Together (to Ask the Lord’s Blessing)” and “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Two wrongs, even sacred ones, do not make a divine right.
glance briefly
Indeed, that’s what your garden-variety glance is: brief.
HIV virus
HIV = human immunodeficiency virus.
hollow tube
Bet you hadn’t thought of that one, had you.
hourly (or daily or weekly or monthly or yearly) basis
integrate with each other
interdependent upon each other
join together
kneel down
knots per hour
One knot = one nautical mile per hour.
last of all
lesbian woman
Come on, folks. Think.
lift up
low ebb
One may properly (if perhaps dully) refer to one’s lowest emotional ebb, but an ebb is low by definition.
main protagonist
I don’t hold with the notion that a story can have no more than one protagonist, but “main protagonist” grates.
merge together
might possibly
moment in time
Whitney Houston notwithstanding.
more superior
Mount Fujiyama
As we note that yama means “mountain,” we also note that we can refer to Fujiyama or to Mount Fuji.
mutual cooperation
___ o’clock A.M. in the morning
Just plain unacceptable. Ditto “P.M. in the evening.”
While we’re here, let’s dispatch “twelve midnight” and “twelve noon”; “midnight” and “noon” are all you need to say.
orbit around
overexaggerate
Even spellcheck sneers at it.
passing fad
A fad is, by definition, of brief duration. A fancy may not be (though it’s certainly superficial and usually capricious), so Ira Gershwin (“The radio and the telephone / and the movies that we know / may just be passing fancies and in time may go”) and Cole Porter (“And it’s not a passing fancy or a fancy pass”) are in the clear.
past history
personal friend, personal opinion
“Personal,” more often than not, begs to be deleted whenever or wherever it shows up.*2 And the only thing worse than “my personal opinion” is “my own personal opinion.”
PIN number
PIN = personal identification number.
plan ahead
preplan
Horrid.*3
raise up
reason why
I i
nclude this here largely to disinclude it. You can usually do without the “why,” but there’s no particular reason you ought. Not “the reason is because,” though. That’s a bit much.
regular routine
return (or recall or revert or many other things beginning with “re-”) back
rise up
If you think I’m going to pick a fight with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who uses the phrase “rise up” repeatedly in Hamilton’s “My Shot,” you have another think coming.
short in length
shuttle back and forth
sink down
skirt around
slightly ajar
sudden impulse
surrounded on all sides
swoop down
To be nitpickingly technical about it, swooping is a downward action, so “swoop down” is one more word than one needs. But everyone says it, so let’s give it a pass. We’re also very used to “swoop up,” as in swooping up (or scooping up) a dropped ball or child.
sworn affidavit
undergraduate student
“Undergraduate” is an excellent noun. No need to use it as an adjective to modify itself.
unexpected surprise
Dreadful. And common, in both senses of the word.
unsolved mystery
Once it’s solved, it’s not a mystery anymore, is it.
unthaw
Come now.
usual custom
wall mural
No, really, I’ve seen this.
wall sconce
Same.
* * *
—
Copyediting FAQ
Q. What’s the most redundant redundancy you’ve ever encountered?
A. I recall it as if it were yesterday:
“He implied without quite saying.”
I was so filled with delight on encountering that, I scarcely had the heart to cross out “without quite saying” and to note in the margin, politely and succinctly, “BY DEF.”
But I did it anyway.
*1 “Retronym” is a term coined by the journalist Frank Mankiewicz in 1980 to identify a new term coined to replace a term whose meaning, once clear, has become clouded or outmoded, often by some technological advance. For instance: What was once simply a watch became, with the invention of digital watches, an analog watch. Ordinary guitars were dubbed, after the electric ones showed up, acoustic guitars. No one ever referred to a landline till mobile phones became the thing. Closer to home, one had no cause to refer to a hardcover book till paperbacks were invented, nor to refer to a mass-market paperback (those are the little ones you find in spinning drugstore racks) till those larger, svelter, more expensive editions we call trade paperbacks appeared.
*2 I’d like to be able to condemn “personal friend” as a product of our modern era of actual friends and virtual friends, but I can’t, as I’ve found numerous uses of the phrase going back to the 1800s.
*3 An awful lot of “pre-” compounds work just fine without the prefix, so be on your guard. Some people quibble over “preorder,” but it does carry a meaning that “order” doesn’t quite: If I order something, I expect it to be delivered as close to immediately as is humanly possible. If I preorder something—a book, say—I recognize that it’s not yet available and that I’m going to have to wait for it.
HERE’S EVERYTHING I CAN THINK OF that I think is important—or at least interesting, or at least simply odd—that I couldn’t find a place for elsewhere.
1.
Strictly differentiating between “each other,” in reference to something occurring between two people,
Johnny and I like each other.
and “one another,” for three or more,
“Everybody get together, try to love one another right now.”
is yet another of those shakily justifiable rules invented by some obscure grammarian of centuries past that, nonetheless, I like to observe, particularly as many writers flip back and forth between the two apparently at random, and randomness in writing, unlike raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, is not one of my favorite things. You cannot properly be criticized if you don’t follow the rule (or, let’s say, “rule”), but neither can you be criticized if you do.
2.
If you only see one movie this year…
Normal human beings frontload the word “only” at the beginning of a sentence. Copy editors will tend to pick up that “only” and drop it next to the thing that’s being “only”d:
If you see only one movie this year…
Or, for instance:
NORMAL HUMAN BEING: You can only watch a movie ironically so many times before you’re watching it earnestly.
COPY EDITOR: You can watch a movie ironically only so many times before you’re watching it earnestly.
Does the latter perhaps sound a bit stilted? Perhaps it does, but to be perfectly honest, there’s a certain tautness in slightly stilted prose that I find almost viscerally thrilling.
I also think that readers don’t much notice when prose is wound up a bit too tight but may well, and not favorably, notice overloose prose.
Moreover, a loosely placed “only” can distort the meaning of a sentence entirely.
That said, in copyediting fiction, especially fiction with an informal narrative voice and, even more so, dialogue in fiction, I’m most likely to leave the “only” where the author set it.*1
3.
Fifty-five years and counting after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the conspiracy theories it gave birth to, I continue to caution writers against describing any other grassy knoll as a “grassy knoll.” It remains, I think, a distractingly potent term.
4.
Here’s a fun weird thing: The word “namesake” works in both directions. That is, if you were named after your grandfather, you are his namesake. He is also yours. Who knew.
5.
Back in the 1990s, it seemed as if I couldn’t turn a manuscript page without running into the words “inchoate” and “limn,” and I began to shudder at their every appearance. Oddly, I can’t recall the last time I ran into either. So, by all means, please start using “inchoate” and “limn” again. I rather miss them.*2
6.
Clichés should be avoided like the plague.
7.
There’s a world of difference between going into the water (an action generally accompanied by flailing and shrieking and other merriment) and going in the water (an action generally accompanied by staring abstractedly into the distance, and, no, you’re not fooling anyone), and it’s a difference to be honored.
Into = movement.
In = presence.
The same applies to, say, “jumping into a lake” (transferring from pier to water) and “jumping in a lake” (in the water already and propelling oneself vertically upward), but the vernacular being what it is, no one will object to the traditional dismissal “Aww go jump in a lake.”
8.
There is a world of difference between turning in to a driveway, which is a natural thing to do with one’s car, and turning into a driveway, which is a Merlyn trick.
9.
Of two brothers, one fifteen and one seventeen, the fifteen-year-old is the younger, not the youngest, and the seventeen-year-old is the older (or elder, if you like), not the oldest (or eldest).
It takes three to make an “-est.”
Except, English being English, in the phrase “best foot forward.”
10.
If you love something passionately and vigorously, you love it no end. To love something “to no end,” as one often sees it rendered, would be to love it pointlessly. If that’s what you mean, then OK.
11.
The habit of inauthentically attributing wisecracks, pur
ported profundities, inspirational doggerel, and other bits of refrigerator-door wisdom to famous people is scarcely new—members of the press, particularly newspaper columnists, have been doing it for decades—but the Internet has grossly exacerbated the problem, with numerous quote-aggregation sites irresponsibly devoted to prettily packaging the fakery, thus encouraging the unwary (or uncaring) to snarf it up, then hork it up, ad nauseam.
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