“Omit unnecessary words!” But not all of them

redundancy is widely seen as a stylistic sin, “Omit unnecessary words” is perhaps the least redundant statement of this approach, which was made famous by “The Elements of Style”, a bestselling usage manual published in 1959. In this, eb whiteAn essayist and novelist, attributed the dictation to William Strunk, his university English teacher. In class, Strunk “dropped so many unnecessary words” that he often “was left with nothing more to say, yet with time to fill in”. So Strunk resorted to saying everything three times: “Omit the unnecessary words! Omit the unnecessary words! Omit the unnecessary words!”

However, upon reflection, did he really need to say it three times himself? If he had already said all that was needed, he could have left the class early instead of repeating his call for judgment. He did so, suggesting that there may be more value in redundancy than meets the eye. Language scholars actually think that it serves several functions.

One, indicated by Strunk’s recapitulation, is the ability to learn. Repetition is, after all, reinforcement. Languages ​​that incorporate the same piece of grammatical information in more than one way are probably more easily learned by children, or indeed adults. For example, the -ed ending on the verb in “Yesterday, he left” does not add any new information, because “yesterday” already places the event in the past. Many languages—Mandarin, for example—do not require such endings. In those, such as English, which do, doubling the signs may have evolved to make them easier to learn.

Another advantage of redundancy can be seen on those trains and planes. These are noisy and distracting places where a rude “Please collect your things” cannot be heard by all passengers. Redundancy makes a signal stronger. For example, spacecraft transmitting digital messages to Earth include “error-correction bits”, redundancies in the signal. which allows engineers to essentially rebuild worn out transmissions. Redundancy here is a feature, not a flaw.

A recent study of Dutch and English confirmed that the same is true of human languages. It looked at how both languages ​​handle sentences such as “She gave him the book”: that is, with both a direct object, “the book”, and an indirect one, “him”. In both Dutch and English, the word order is relatively fixed for the giver, the given object, and the recipient. But there are also ways to emphasize this information. The pronoun “that” is in the nominative case, marking it as the subject or the giver. “him” is in the objective case, making it clear that it is an object (it is not “he”). Strictly speaking, either the form of the pronoun or the word order can differentiate the giver from the recipient, but most such sentences in English and Dutch offer both.

Languages ​​can also adapt to maintain an optimal level of redundancy. A thousand years ago, every English noun—”king”, say, or “Alfred”—changed form, as “he” does “him”, to show what role each word plays in a sentence ( subject, direct object and so on). Those endings disappeared over the centuries, potentially leaving the sentence ambiguous. English grammar responded by making word order, which was once fluid, more rigid. And English employs still other features—such as the use of the preposition “to”, or the objective-case forms “him” and “his”—in case.

Another possible use of redundancy is to reduce listening or reading only. If every possible word that can be removed is removed, so that every remaining word becomes extremely important, then listening and reading become stressful. You cannot let your mind wander even for a moment. This kind of prose is almost too dense with information; Even a short passage like this will demand reading. Sometimes a little room to breathe isn’t a bad thing.

Only a little, ie. The advice to keep it trim is still good advice. Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French writer, once apologized for a long letter by saying: “I didn’t have time to make it short.” Keeping things tidy can be a tedious task for the writer, but it saves time for the reader. , at least up to a point. create your prose as thin as needed To keep your reader reading—but no more.

Read more from Johnson, our columnist on language:

If Stigma Is the Problem, Using Different Words May Not Help (16 February)

Some famous etymologies are too good to be true (February 2)

Translating the Bible is a tricky business, as a new book shows (January 19)

Also: Johnson Column How got its name

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