Is Redundancy Hiding in Your Writing?

How to Spot Unnecessary Words and Get Rid of Them

“That spring, in May, she married in a lavish ceremony.” See anything wrong with that sentence? A similar sentence escaped my attention when I did a first read of an autobiography recently. I found it when I came back through as a detail-oriented, redundancy-seeking line editor. Readers need to know either “that spring” or “in May,” but not both. The rule of thumb in writing is to be specific, so I kept May.

Redundancies are common in writing, and I find them to be stealthy errors. Sometimes I don’t catch them until a second or third pass through a manuscript. They can feel natural and conversational because our speech is full of redundancy. In writing, however, repetition makes the story lumber, slowing the reader down. Concise, efficient writing feels brisk and clear. Like catching a steady wind on a sailboat, concise writing sets readers on a course with good momentum.

Fresh eyes are your best weapon for finding redundancies in your writing. I recommend stepping away from the manuscript for a few weeks or hiring a professional editor (or both). You spot redundancy when you don’t take the meaning of a sentence for granted and really evaluate each word.

Here are some more examples of redundant words hiding in sentences:

• “The driftwood floated on the surface of the calm, dark water.” Where else would the driftwood float besides the surface? The sentence becomes: The driftwood floated on the calm, dark water.
• “We boarded the train car and settled into our seats for the twelve-hour train ride to Italy.” Surely it’s a train ride if we’ve boarded a train car, so the second “train” needs to go.
• “They developed an enduring, lifelong friendship.” Of course the friendship was enduring if it lasted a lifetime. Just use “lifetime,” the more specific adjective.
• “The high-five greeting was the accepted norm in our fraternity.” If it’s the norm, then it must be accepted by the majority. “Accepted” is redundant.

Another way memoir writers often create redundancy is by inserting a summary sentence to conclude a description. Say a writer describes her son’s graduation ceremony in detail: the graduate’s shiny shoes peeking out under his gown, his proud stride across the stage, and the bear hug they exchange when he finds her in the auditorium. The paragraph concludes: “It was one of the most memorable events of my life.”  

I completely understand where the desire for this sentence comes from. The author wants readers to know how much this graduation meant to her, and the description alone doesn’t feel like enough. The sentence sounds like something she would say in conversation: “This was absolutely one of the most memorable events of my life! It was such a big deal. I will never forget it.”

In writing, however, a different set of rules apply. When you write something, readers assume you mean it, and they tend to believe you. If you write about what you experienced, including the sensory details that make a scene come alive, readers will know it was important. This is the challenge but also the beauty of the written word: it’s inherently more meaningful than the spoken word because we give more care to what we write than what we say (social media being perhaps the exception to that rule).

As you go through your manuscript, be on the lookout for anything that smacks of repetition, redundancy, or over-emphasis. If you feel a summation statement is needed, maybe you haven’t written your scene with enough detail or emotion. Removing the unnecessary bulk from your writing will improve the flow of your sentences and create a more polished manuscript. Your readers will thank you.