The department of redundancy department

Editors often preach the principle of avoiding redundancy. In newspapers, the practice of trimming out such words and phrases is particularly important because we have limited space. We need to make every word count, so we should not say the same thing twice.

I heard a soundbite from President Bush’s news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which the president spoke of trying to form a “common consensus.” The president was speaking off the cuff and answering reporters’ questions, so he can certainly be forgiven if he used a redundancy. But his phrase reminded me that people often pair “consensus” with “of opinion” or “general,” both of which are contained within the word “consensus,” which means “general agreement” or “shared opinion.” A “consensus” is “common” also.

I ran across a minor redundancy in editing recently: four inches shorter in length. I trimmed out “in length.” We often see “ATM machine” and “HIV virus.” The initialism ATM stands for automated teller machine, and HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus, so we don’t need to follow the abbreviations with the extra words. And if something is “destroyed,” a writer needn’t modify it with “completely.” Television weather forecasters don’t need to say “in the early morning hours.” They can just say “early.” People fleeing trouble don’t find a “safe haven,” just a “haven.”

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This article was originally posted by the Raleigh News & Observer, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Co.; is posted here to provide continuity; and is copyright © 2011 The News & Observer Publishing Company, which reserves the right to remove this post.