Writing, Clear and Simple

I’m testing a new feature: the Quotation of the Day from TheFreeDictionary.com. I tossed it into the page header, but I’m not sure if that’s the best place for it. Let me know what you think.

Another new article: Delivering bad news.

I’m working on an article about online content theft and copyright infringment, and I’m putting out a call for anybody who has experience or information about this. If you have ever had your online content—blog posts, articles, pictures, graphics, or any other web content—republished on another Website without your permission, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Please send me an e-mail if you’re willing to share your experiences.

Do you have a hot water heater in your residence? We don’t.

We just have a water heater.

If the water is already hot, why heat it? "Hot water heater" is an example of redundancy, or pleonasm. Other examples include PIN number and ATM machine (PIN stands for Personal Identification Number and ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine).

John McIntyre has a list of some of the more obnoxious pleonasms found in journalism, including these:

Advance planning: Planning is, by definition, done in advance.

Close scrutiny: To scrutinize is to examine closely.

Consensus of opinion: A consensus is an opinion that a group of people have come to share.

Final results: The result is the outcome, the final thing. This tautology turns up in articles about elections, in which speaking of early returns and final returns would be more accurate.

Mass exodus:  The word exodus means the departure of a large group of people. Adding mass adds nothing.

Watch out for unneeded and extraneous repetition and redundancy. Question every word. Sometimes you do want to repeat yourself to emphasize something or because it just sounds good. (McIntyre points to William Faulkner’s line about "old verities and truths of the heart.") But don’t do it out of sloppiness.

There were so many good comments on the last "What’s wrong here" post that I thought it would be a good idea to bring them to the the front page and spend some time discussing them. 

Let’s go ahead and fix the “rose/raised” issue, so we don’t have that distracting us, leaving us with this:

Mauresmo then sat and hung her head, seemingly stunned and overwhelmed. She finally got up and raised her arms in triumph, choking back her own tears of emotion, as French flags fluttered in the stands, still looking less than triumphant as Henin-Hardenne continued to weep.

David suggested revising the first sentence to put the action of the sentence into the stress position—that is, at the end of the sentence—and paring out some of the qualifiers. I can see getting rid of the “seemingly,” but I’d leave the “then” in because of the sequence of events in the previous paragraphs. Not a big deal either way.

Stunned and overwhelmed, Mauresmo then sat and hung her head.

Corndog pointed out that the second sentence is just jam-packed with too many attempts to describe the scene. It’s 34 words long, which by itself isn’t enough to make a sentence ungainly (a good average to shoot for is 25 words). This sentence needs something, though, and breaking it in two might help. Let’s cut it after the bit about the flags fluttering. I agree with the commenters who assumed that it was Mauresmo, and not the flags, who was looking less than triumphant.

David also noted that “tears of emotion” and saying she raised her arms in triumph, but then looked less than triumphant were both rather clumsy, and the intent isn’t clear. I’m guessing that the conditions of Mauresmo’s win—with her opponent quitting because of illness—took the sheen off her victory. So I’d try it as something like this:

As French flags fluttered in the stands, she finally got up and raised her arms, choking back her own tears. However, with Henin-Hardenne continuing to weep in the background, Mauresmo looked less than triumphant.

Any other suggestions?