Chapter 11 — Redundancy and superfluous words

The essentials in four points:

• A word is superfluous when its meaning is already contained in another: repeat again, return back, new innovation, refer back to, proceed forward.
• Watch for semantic doublets: same identical, old ancient, in my opinion I think.
• In error identification, the faulty segment is the one with the extra word — nothing to "correct", only to spot.

Redundancy is the most counter-intuitive point on the ITP: the underlined segment is not wrong, it is superfluous. Standard academic English deletes any word whose idea is already contained in another word of the sentence.

1. Verbs that already contain their adverb. return contains “back”, repeat contains “again”, proceed contains “forward”, refer needs no “back”.
✘ returned back · ✘ repeat again · ✘ proceed forward · ✘ refer back to

2. Doubled adjectives and nouns. ✘ the same identical conclusion, ✘ old ancient scrolls, ✘ a new innovation, ✘ the final outcome… in the end, ✘ past history. One of the two words must go.

3. Doubled clauses. ✘ In my opinion, I think…; ✘ the reason is because… (→ the reason is that). One opinion marker, one cause marker.