Читать книгу Collins Improve Your Writing Skills - Graham King - Страница 17
ОглавлениеAn utterly unique added extra: Tautology
Mr and Mrs David Smith are proud to announce the birth of a baby girl, Sarah Anne.
Now, like ‘Dog Bites Man’, this isn’t really news. But what if Mrs Smith had given birth to an adult girl? That would be news! Obviously Mrs Smith had given birth to a baby; it happens all the time. The newsy bit is that it was a girl.
The use of the word baby here is what is known as pleonasm, the use of redundant words. The same would apply if Mrs Smith invited the neighbours in to see her ‘new baby’. Are there any old babies? Of course all babies are new!
When a word repeats the meaning of another word in the same phrase it is called tautology and, usually, all verbal superfluities are known by this term.
Free gift! Added extra! Added bonus! These are exciting claims. And also wasted words: classic examples of tautology, the use of more than one word to convey the same thought.
A gift, if not free, is not a gift – except perhaps in the slang usage, ‘That car was an absolute gift at £6,000’.
Something extra is clearly something added. And a bonus is normally an addition. Even if the word is used to describe something apart from money, an added bonus is an added addition. Nonsense, obviously. Yet we hear and read phrases such as added bonus every day, from people who have not thought what they are saying or writing, or do not care.
So accustomed are we to tautology in everyday speech and reading that this form of language misuse can pass unnoticed:
Will David’s income be sufficient enough for you both?
How many of us would normally detect that enough is a wasted word?
Avoiding redundant words and expressions is a sign of a caring writer and here, to help you, is an A to Z of some of the more common superfluities.
An A to Z of Tautology
absolute certainty
actual facts (and its cousin, true facts)
added bonus/extra
adequate/sufficient enough
a downward plunge
advance warning
appear on the scene
arid desert
attach together
audible click
burn down, burnt up (burn and burnt by themselves are usually better)
circle round, around
collaborate together
connect together
consensus of opinion (it’s simply consensus)
couple together
crisis situation
divide it up, divide off
each and every one
early beginnings
eat up
enclosed herewith, enclosed herein
end result
file away
final completion
final upshot
follow after
forward planning
free gift
funeral obsequies
future prospects
gather together
gale force winds
general consensus
grateful thanks
Have got (a common one, this. Simply have is fine)
the hoi polloi (as hoi means ‘the’, the is obviously redundant)
hoist up
hurry up
important essentials
in between
inside of
indirect allusion
I saw it with my own eyes (who else’s?)
join together
joint cooperation
just recently
lend out
link together
lonely isolation
meet together
merge together
mix together, mix things together
more preferable
mutual cooperation
necessary requisite
new beginner, new beginning
new creation
new innovation, new invention
original source
other alternative
outside of
over with (for ended, finished)
pair of twins
past history
penetrate into
personal friend
polish up
proceed onward
raze to the ground (raze by itself means exactly that)
really excellent
recall back
reduce down
refer back
relic of the past
renew again
repeat again
revert back
rise up
safe haven
seldom ever
set a new world record
settle up
sink down
still continue
sufficient enough
swallow down
this day and age
totally complete
totally finished
tiny little child
unique means the only one of its kind. You can’t get much more unique than that.
Not even quite unique, absolutely unique and utterly unique
unexpected surprise
unite together
unjustly persecuted
usual habit
very pregnant
viable alternative
warm 75 degrees (of course 75 degrees is warm!)
whether or not
widow woman
There are other forms of repetition, some intentional and some not. Writers have often used it for effect, for example in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
Or in this equally famous passage from a speech of Winston Churchill’s:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Then there are those instances when, in writing, we manage to box ourselves into a corner with such irritating repetitions as, ‘Her opinion is, is that it will never work’; ‘The dealer admitted he had had the sideboard in his shop for two months’; ‘Not that that would bother her in the least’ and so on.
Finally, take care with double negatives, distant cousins of pleonasm. Although they can be useful they are also often confusing. The bomb attack was not unexpected. If you lived in a terrorist-ridden area, where to be bombed sooner or later would be no great surprise, the double negative not unexpected is better for conveying a suspended kind of expectation than was expected or was no surprise.
The puzzle for many writers is, why is I don’t know nothing about it considered to be unacceptable, while the Prime Minister is not unmindful of the damage already suffered . . is grammatically respectable? The answer lies in the modifying power of the combination; not uncommon, for example, does not mean exactly the same as common but something between common and uncommon – ‘a little more common than you might think’. The trouble is that often, double negatives can leave the readers trying to work out what is meant, so they are probably best avoided.
