Chapter 12 The Trimmables

THERE’S A LOT OF DELETING IN COPYEDITING, not just of the “very”s and “rather”s and “quite”s and excrescent “that”s with which we all encase our prose like so much Bubble Wrap and packing peanuts, but of restatements of information—“AS ESTAB’D,” one politely jots in the margin.

Much repetition, though, comes under the more elementary heading of Two Words Where One Will Do, and here’s a collection of easily disposed of redundancies. Some of these may strike you as obvious—though their obviousness doesn’t stop them from showing up constantly. Others are a little more arcane—the sorts of things you could likely get away with without anyone’s noticing—but they’re snippable nonetheless.

In either case, for those moments when you’re contemplating that either you or your prose could stand to go on a diet and your prose seems the easier target, here’s a good place to start.

(The bits in italics are the bits you can dispose of.)

ABM missile

ABM = anti-ballistic missile.

absolutely certain, absolute certainty, absolutely essential

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 include 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.