| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 62
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| which is itself an argument from rhetoric. Thus, according to the newer sense of the term, you could construe as redundant the phrase empty rhetoric, as in The politicians talk about solutions, but they usually offer only empty rhetoric. It appears that the traditional meanings of rhetoric still carry a lot of weight, for only 35 percent of the Usage Panel judged this example to be redundant. Presumably, therefore, rhetoric can be other than empty. | 1 |
equally as
| | The adverb equally is generally regarded as redundant when used in combination with as. In an earlier survey, 63 percent of the Usage Panel found the following examples unacceptably redundant: Experience is equally as valuable as theory. Equally as important is the desire to learn. To get rid of the redundancy, you must delete equally from the first example and as from the second. Solving this usage problem usually involves using as alone when making an explicit comparison and equally alone when you want the comparison to be implied. | 2 |
free gift
| | What kind of gift isn’t free? The kind that comes with strings attached. The widespread offering of gifts as part of product promotions has given the free gift a meaning all its own. A free gift ought, therefore, to be offered without an obligation to test-drive a vehicle, enroll in a book club, or open a savings account. Ought. Maybe the real problem is in using the word gift to refer to something that entails an obligation. | 3 |
from whence
| | Send that dish back from whence it came! A dyspeptic king might say that, but if uttered by a patron in most restaurants, it would be hard not to view it as anything but a joke. Whence, like thence, usually adds an archaic or highly formal tone to the passage in which it is used. It’s great for creating an air of mock formality too. | 4 |
| Granting the king his royal license for formality to say from whence it came, would he then be open to criticism for redundancy? Language critics have attacked the construction from whence as redundant since the 18th century, and it is true that whence itself incorporates the sense of from, as in a remote village, whence little news reached the wider world. But from whence has been used steadily by reputable writers since the 14th century, most notably in the King James Bible: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” (Psalm 121). It is hard to label as incorrect a construction with such a respectable record of usage. | 5 |
inside of
| | People sometimes criticize the construction inside of as redundant or colloquial. But inside of is well established in formal writing, particularly in reference to periods of time: They usually return the manuscript inside of (or inside) a month. | 6 |
mental telepathy
| | If you are telepathic, are you also mental? The phrase mental telepathy ought to be regarded as redundant, but like some other fixed phrases, such as hollow tube, it has become so well established that the objection smacks of nitpicking. | 7 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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