Say It Once

I recently came across a website promising to prevent harm “before it happens”.

Which is the only time you can prevent anything. Preventing harm after it happens is just called cleaning up.

The Greeks had a word for this: pleonasm, from pleonazein, “to be excessive”. It means using more words than the meaning needs. Business is full of them.

A free gift. As opposed to the gifts you pay for.

The end result. Results tend to turn up at the end.

Advance planning. Planning afterwards is called an inquiry.

An added bonus. A bonus is already the added bit.

Past experience. Future experience is still on back order.

Close proximity, unexpected surprise, future plans, final outcome, collaborate together.

There’s even a version for acronyms. PIN number is a personal identification number number. An ATM machine is an automated teller machine machine. New Scientist coined a name for the habit: RAS syndrome, “redundant acronym syndrome” syndrome. Somebody presumably enjoyed that very much.

To be fair, a pleonasm isn’t always a crime. “I saw it with my own eyes” is technically redundant, since whose eyes would you use? But it’s doing a job: insisting this happened, right in front of me. Speeches, poetry and courtrooms all use repetition deliberately, for emphasis or certainty.

The trouble comes when it isn’t deliberate. In business writing, a pleonasm usually means one of two things. Either nobody read the sentence back, or the writer reached for an extra word to sound more emphatic, more professional, or a bit more expensive. “Free gift” is trying to make you feel generously treated twice.

Readers notice, even if they couldn’t name it. A doubled-up word reads as padding, and once they spot padding in one place, they start wondering where else it is. That’s the real cost. It’s not the extra word. It’s the trust it leaks.

The fix takes ten seconds. Read the phrase and ask: if I deleted the first word, would anything be lost?

If not, delete it. Say it once.