This article encourages writers to eliminate redundant, unneeded, and surplus words.

How’s that again? Obviously, I need to kill unneeded and surplus because they’re redundant.

But alas, many writers waste space and their readers’ time with unnecessary words.

Here are six reasons why writers let redundancy slip in, along with how to fix the problems.

They don’t think their readers will “get it” without further explanation.

I intentionally wrote that first sentence as if I was thinking, “I better make sure make sure my readers understand what redundant means, so I’ll add unneeded and surplus.”

But my readers are smarter than that. If I just write redundant you’ll know what I mean.

They’re using an adjective to modify a noun that doesn’t need modifying.

In each of these examples below the adjective is the first word in the phrase. But the nouns stand by themselves, so we can kill the adjective. (This is only a short list; there are far too many more examples for one article.)

          nearby neighbors

          free gift

          tall skyscraper

          unexpected surprise

There are two ways to determine if an adjective is unnecessary. The first is to simply remove the adjective. If the word still makes sense you know the adjective isn’t needed. If someone is your neighbor he lives nearby. If you receive a gift it’s free. Skyscrapers, by definition, are tall. So we’ll kill nearby, free, and tall.

The second way to decide if we can remove the adjective is to substitute the opposite adjective and see if the phrase makes sense.

            Short skyscraper

            Expected surprise

That doesn’t work. If a skyscraper is short then it’s not a skyscraper. If a surprise was expected it’s not a surprise. So we can dump tall and unexpected.

They try to explain abbreviations.

There’s no need to write Dr. Lisa Martin, M.D. If she’s a M.D. she’s a doctor.

Similarly, don’t use morning and a.m. together, or evening and p.m. This is incorrect:

           The crash happened at 7:25 p.m. in the evening.

Either write:

            The crash happened at 7:25 in the evening.

or

            The crash happened at 7:25 p.m.

They’re trying to both show and tell.

You’re familiar with the writing admonition to show, rather than tell. Certainly don’t do both, like this:

             John bit his fingernails and tapped his foot nervously as he waited for the job interview to start.

John’s actions show us he’s nervous. There’s no need to tell us by using the redundant adverb nervously.

They add unnecessary prepositions.

          “I don’t know where my phone is,” Jeff said. “I’ve never lost it before.”

Before is redundant because it’s obvious Jeff can’t be speaking of the future.

Similarly, prepositional phrases may be redundant.

          I like to listen to music while driving in my car.

Where else would you be driving? Kill the prepositional phrase in my car.

(My favorite unnecessary prepositional phrase is “I’m thinking in my head.”)

They don’t know what one letter of an acronym means.

In ATM the m means machine, therefore ATM machine is redundant. The same goes for PIN number. The n stands for number. Just write PIN.

Finally, remember this:

          Writers should avoid redundancy and unneeded words while creating written stories.

We better make that:

          Writers should avoid redundancy.