The Last of All Redundant Essays
A Personal Opinion on the Power of Redundancy to Lift Up Your Writing and Deliver a Better End Product
The consensus of opinion these days seems to be that redundancy in writing is bad. While it may be the general consensus it is not an absolute certainty that this is the case. In fact it might possibly be the case that redundancies are more superior to other methods of emphasis when it comes to getting and keeping your readers attention, despite what Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer says in the above linked piece.
If past history is any guide then what I am about to say will fall on deaf ears. Therefore I give this advance warning, in this task I may not succeed. This is not intended to be a fiction novel in which myself as the main protagonist travels to Mount Fujiyama with a lesbian woman to gather together the parts of some legendary Macguffin. Rather it is meant as a serious rejoinder to the members of the anti-redundancy brigade led by men like Benjamin Dreyer who erupt violently at even the hint of redundancy in any form of writing. It is these exact same men who shudder at the thought of a misplaced oxford comma or vague pronoun reference.
There can be little doubt that this is a crisis situation, and action by the community of writers is warranted. However, we cannot choose the route of direct confrontation and the reason why is simple, for if we do the end result will surely be failure. Instead we should merge together in mutual cooperation from 8 p.m. in the evening everynight until 8 o’clock a.m. in the morning each day, from twelve midnight ’til twelve noon. My fellow countryman and dear readers, it is absolutely certain that if we do not rise up together we will fall down alone.
We can no longer avoid joining together and refusing to kneel down down at the altar of our so called God, the chief copy editor’s of America. From whence they came no longer matters, if it ever did. Their power is at it’s low ebb, and I don’t think I overexaggerate when I say they have less import today than your average paparazzi photographer. They find themselves surrounded on all sides by artificial intelligence powered editing software and undergraduate students with machine learning degrees looking to make a name for themselves in the ever expanding and white hot copy editing job market. Therefore it should be no unexpected surprise that now is the moment in time we must choose to strike. It is absolutely essential that we do this now.
So I present this piece to you as a free gift, and as an added bonus, I give you the exact same final outcome you would have gotten if you had never read this post, which is nothing. I give you a passing fad, a hollow tube, nothing more, nothing less.
Author’s postscript: Assless chaps, I freakin quit. This was way too short in length to use all the redundancies mentioned in the original Dreyer piece. As is my usual custom I ended my own post when I got bored. Mostly I got tired of shuttling back and forth between the MS Word document where I had copied the list and the internet browser within which I was working on this crap fest. Oh well, gonna hit the old ATM machine for some cash, flip on the CNN network, and chill for the rest of my day. Job well done DeMarco, job well done.
