Monday, January 21, 2008

Redundancy in the use of certain words in English

Students of English sometimes use certain words incorrectly because redundancy occurs. Such words include repeat, return, discuss, and reuse.


1 'repeat' means 'say again'.

The sentence 'He repeated the answer again.' is incorrect.

The correct one is 'He repeated the answer.'


2 The meaning of 'return' is 'give back'.

Hence, it is wrong to say 'Please return back the book I lent you last week.'

You should say 'Please return the book I lent you last week.'


3 'discuss' carries the meaning of 'talk about'.

It is therefore wrong to write 'Let's discuss about our future plans.'

Instead, change it to 'Let's discuss our future plans.'


4 If you reuse something you use it again.

Redundancy occurs when we say 'You should reuse envelopes again.'

It should be replaced with 'You should reuse envelopes.'


So much redundancy in the use off of certain words in English.

7 comments:

t3ss4 said...

I am definitely guilty on "lets discuss about..." hehe.

good points you have here :)

take care yeoh. just passin by ;)

keeyit said...

Those are what I always mentioned daily :P

Lo Kelween said...

can we like...pretend to ignore all these rules and regulation...hehe

anyway i link from the little linky love, a meme i did just now. have a nice day! :)

j said...

This post is brilliant! I already knew these rules but they are such simply grammatical errors that should be made public. I love your blog, would you like to link to mine by any chance?

Hazelmoi said...

Hi, Good point there. I always tend to make the same mistakes. Nice blog anyway, A good read indeed :)

krystyna said...

Thanks God ( Elween) that I'm here. My poor English probably will be better soon!

Keep up your great work!

Gelombang Rakyat said...

I remember hearing, *Sir, please repeat it once more time again*.