Avoid tendency to use redundant words to get specified word count

When you are not up to the task, one of the most difficult things is filling a report or writing an opinion that must meet a specific word count. Where the count is 800 words, but you cannot go beyond, say, 500, ingenuity is called upon. That is when you must go the extra mile to bridge the word deficit but still write an intelligent report.

It is in that endeavour that some of us take the easy way out but, unfortunately, end up betraying our inadequacies. In such situations, we are susceptible to pleonasm. 

This is the tendency to use more words than is necessary and in the process, we introduce a lot of redundant words and phrases.

Unless one seeks to emphasise a point or wants to get some dramatic effect, it is safer to steer clear of pleonasm. Pleonasm derives from the Greek word ‘pleonasmos’, which means ‘excessive’.  At times, indecision leads us into the trap of using comma splices.

You might have come across expressions such as; ‘I saw him do it with my own two eyes’, ‘He was selling his household goods to those who had cash money’, ‘I heard it with my own ears when he swore he was going to beat her up if she did not return his phone’.

At a casual glance, such statements won’t attract attention, but clearly, there are a number of redundant words that detract value from the sentences in which they are used.

For example, is it possible to hear or see something using the ears and eyes of other people? Where the narrator is indicating a personal experience, the answer is no.

Mental picture

Abstractly, it is quite possible to see things through the eyes of others.  For example, you may not have been to some of the world’s famous national parks , but through the eyes of story tellers and  renowned authors such as Wilbur Smith you can, from their  graphic descriptions, recreate a scene they witnessed somewhere in the wild.

Such writers can make you get the exact mental picture of a given situation. Present day gospel preachers, however, don’t fall in this category because though they have such graphic descriptions of hell and heaven, none has ever been there to give us something authoritative. Luckily, we understand some of their motivation.

In recent times, the apparent buck passing between the Executive, Judiciary, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations regarding who should shoulder blame for the lackluster show in the highly publicized, yet seemingly ineffectual fight against ingrained corruption drew my attention to a redundant phrase.

So fleeting

Decrying the small amount of money allocated to the judiciary vis a vis the actual budget the Judiciary submitted for approval, a speaker’s lament was: “The amount of money parliament allocated for the Judiciary was not sufficient enough to facilitate seamless operations”. The words ‘sufficient’ and ‘enough’ should not be used in the same context. They mean the same thing.

Precluding such grammatical errors should not be daunting. The individuals we deem good writers don’t always get it right on the first attempt.

What makes them good is the ability to put their ideas on paper as they get them; for some ideas are so fleeting, you can hardly remember them a minute later.

Having consolidated their points, they take time to reorganize them to ensure a smooth flow of ideas; ideas building on each other, not clashing as to leave the reader confused.

Good writers have the ability to detach themselves from their work afterwards, and then look at it from the readers’ perspective. This introduces the aspect of proof reading and self-editing before going on to another level of proof reading and editing.

It is during this initial process that one eliminates ambiguity, takes out redundant words, eliminates what could be in bad taste or highly contentious and ensures the grammar employed meets acceptable standards. It takes patience, dedication and attention to detail.

Earlier, I made reference to comma splices. These are described as instances where a writer, instead of using a semi colon, colon or conjunction to join two independent clauses, uses the comma. For instance; `Mary loves cooking, she is good at making chapati ‘. To join the two independent clauses, don’t use a comma.

Mr Chagema is a correspondent at The [email protected]