The Trouble With Doubles
Watch out for doubled words, sentences that echo other sentences, and overlapping paragraphs.
HACK RECAP: Last week’s Hack about how to decide what doesn’t need to be said prompted this great comment from a subscriber: “When I review my emails before sending, I invariably identify at least one phrase or sentence that the receiver doesn't need or necessarily want to hear—often the "why" I need to reschedule, for example, when all they need to hear is that I need to reschedule the meeting.” This is great advice: Sometimes readers will need to hear the what and the why—but sometimes the what is enough and the why is too much.
I’m excited to build a community over in the comments, and I hope you’ll stop by and share your hacks.
THIS WEEK’S HACK: To sharpen your message, delete doubled words, combine sentences that echo other sentences, and prune overlapping paragraphs.
Unnecessary repetition in a piece of writing always reminds me of this very annoying joke: Pete and Repeat were in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left? Repeat! Pete and Repeat were in a boat… While repeating words and ideas in your writing may not be quite as annoying as this joke, it can frustrate and confuse your readers.
This week, try to sharpen your message by keeping the Pete and eliminating the Repeat using these three strategies:
1. Delete doubled words.
Doubled words are pairs of words that mean the same thing. If you’re promising to conduct a full and complete investigation, you’re not actually offering anything more than I’m doing in my complete investigation. If you’re grateful to each and every one of your customers, and I am grateful to every one of my customers, you’re not actually grateful to any more people than I am (unless you have more customers). And if you promise to present a true and accurate picture of the current real estate market, your picture won’t be any better than my accurate picture of the current real estate market. You get the idea.
If you’re a lawyer, you’ve probably heard arguments for and against the necessity of using “legal doublets” like cease and desist, aid and abet, or all and sundry. As a non-lawyer, I was interested to learn that these pairings date back to the Norman conquest, when English and French were both spoken in Britain, and legal language combined terms from both languages so that everyone could understand legal documents. The practice stuck, and we ended up with a lot of doublets we don’t need, including many that are just pairs of English words. If you’re a lawyer, I’ll leave the “to doublet or not to doublet” question up to you. But I do like this advice from Bryan Garner, author of Legal Writing in Plain English: “If one word swallows the meaning of other words, use that word alone” (56).
2. Combine sentences that echo other sentences to create one stronger sentence.
While identifying and deleting doubled words is pretty straightforward, it’s trickier to spot doubled sentences. We tend to write sentences that repeat other sentences when we’re not confident that we’ve made ourselves clear enough with the first version. (We do this when we talk, too!) But repetition can obscure your points and make you sound less confident.
Here’s an example of a pair of sentences that overlap. I’ve put the overlapping parts in bold:
Identifying and deleting doubled words is pretty straightforward. But while identifying doubled words is straightforward, it’s trickier to spot doubled sentences.
We all draft pairs of sentences like these when we’re trying to get ideas onto the screen. But once you’ve got that first draft, go back and highlight any overlap you see between sentences. Then combine overlapping sentences into one clearer sentence: While identifying and deleting doubled words is pretty straightforward, it’s trickier to spot doubled sentences.
3. Prune overlapping paragraphs.
If you write double sentences when you’re working out your ideas, you may also find yourself writing multiple paragraphs that make the same point (or the same several points) in slightly different ways. To find doubled paragraphs, leave yourself time to highlight sentences that repeat or echo other sentences. Then cut the repetition—or combine the paragraphs.
Here’s an example:
Paragraph 1: If you write double sentences when you’re working out your ideas, you may also find yourself writing multiple paragraphs that make the same point (or the same several points) in slightly different ways. You may end up with paragraphs that contain sentences very similar to those in other paragraphs, even if they are not quite identical. You’ll need to identify the overlap and delete it.
Paragraph 2: If you don’t take the time to edit your writing, you may miss those paragraphs that are almost identical. To prevent this, try highlighting sentences that repeat or echo sentences in a previous paragraph. Then cut the repetition—or combine the paragraphs.
The bold sentences in the second paragraph echo the words and ideas from the bold sentences in the first paragraph. After identifying the repetition, I was able to combine the ideas into one paragraph:
If you write double sentences when you’re working out your ideas, you may also find yourself writing multiple paragraphs that make the same point (or the same several points) in slightly different ways. To find doubled paragraphs, leave yourself time to highlight sentences that repeat or echo other sentences. Then cut the repetition—or combine the paragraphs.
If you end up using any of these strategies in your writing this week, please let me know! I’d love to hear what’s working and what’s not working.