Greetings!
My two-year-old grandson, Axel, increases his
communication skills every week. His latest
new phrase is to announce that "I
want no want" yogurt or apples or whatever it
is he doesn't want. This sounds pretty
childishly redundant, but it is actually
quite brilliant (spoken with grandmotherly
pride, of course!)
Children develop language with certain
hard-wired rules. One rule Axel knows
intuitively is that the subject (I) is
followed by a verb (want). He hasn't learned yet
that the negative transformation of the verb
"want" is "not want"--and he hasn't caught
on that he can drop the initial "want" and
just say "I don't want." But he will learn
that really quickly.
So how do we explain the redundancies that
creep into our (hopefully) more mature language?
- ATM machine (but ATM means: Automated
Teller Machine)
- Absolutely complete (How can complete not
be absolute?)
- Advance planning (Let's hope we all plan
in advance, not after the fact.)
- CPU Unit (CPU=Central Processing Unit)
- PIN number (Personal Identification
Number)
- I thought to myself (Whom else would you
think to?)
- Hot water heater (Would you install a
"cold water
heater"?)
Sometimes, redundancy is a good thing.
For example, what parent or grandparent isn't
redundant when communicating with children?
Dog owners
repeat themselves often. It's wise for
writers to be
redundant with caution, warning, and danger
statements in procedures. And of course, you
want your airplane's cockpit to have
completely redundant equipment in case one
instrument fails.
But most of us could weed out our
redundancies if we put our
document aside for awhile, then studied
and tested every statement for redundancy.
Remember the message of Spring: "Life is the
elimination of
what is dead." (Wallace Stevens)
