Purge Your Unnecessary Redundancies!

We’ve all had the experience of driving home from work, but not remembering the trip. We jokingly say we were “driving on auto-pilot."

I often have a similar experience while writing. I get lost in thought as I pound out the paragraphs, and am a little astonished when I’m done, not sure how I got there. These first drafts are often filled with cliches, which are usually easy to spot.. A much subtler problem is redundant phrases.

Consider this typical paragraph, written on autopilot:

My personal opinion is that advance planning is absolutely essential for companies who can’t afford to lag behind their competitors. Past experience has shown that the basic fundamentals of planning ahead include developing a general consensus of opinion among staff and carefully scrutinizing all ideas.

That’s 45 words and an average sentence length of 22.5 words. Can reduce those numbers? Yes, if we weed out the words that don’t add to the meaning to the text. Here’s the same graf with the redundant words highlighted:

How to Proofread

A friend of mine, a lover of all things French, posted this simple yet eloquent snippet of prose in her garden. To experience its maximum poetic effect, please read the sign ALOUD now:

Did you just say “Paris in the Spring”? Or, did you say “Paris in the the Spring”? If not, take a closer look at the sign.

Why do so many of us miss that second “the”? Because we know what the sign should say. And that leads us to the first of three simple rules that can ensure your proofreading catches the sort of little (and big) errors that diminish your credibility and tarnish your brand.