Categories
Syntax Usage

A Rose by Any Other Name

Publicity still from Harold Ramis’ sci-fi comedy Multiplicity (1996) with Michael Keaton and Andie MacDowell, in which the Keaton character clones himself.

Many years ago, as a young college graduate, I decided to take a speed reading course at New York University. During the first class, the instructor boasted he was going to quickly double our speed without hurting our comprehension. The trick, so to speak, was to keep on going and not hesitate or backtrack on what we were reading. And lo and behold, everybody quickly fulfilled the instructor’s promise.

The reason this gimmick worked was rather simple. Unless you’re dealing with a very dense, scholarly tome, most writers almost unconsciously repeat themselves. They don’t necessarily do this by using the same words over and over again, but by reiterating the same ideas using different terms or phrases that have the identical or similar meanings (synonyms and related phrases, if you will). So, if you don’t immediately comprehend what’s on the page, you will quickly be cued in by the way the sentences and paragraphs are constructed.

While repetition may be inherent in your narrative, in writing nonfiction you need to be careful to not using the exact same word more than once in the same sentence unless absolutely necessary, or to make a point. Otherwise, your text might prove to be less interesting than it need be. (I’m not talking here of the use word repetition as a literary or poetic device.)

Thus, as an editor, one the most common ways I can improve a client’s writing is by looking for unnecessary word repetition and making appropriate substitutions. There are several ways to do this, the most common of which is to find a synonym or using alternative phrasing. The traditional way to find words with the same or similar meaning is by using a thesaurus. Today’s word processing programs provide useful lists of synonyms by placing your cursor on the word in question and either right clicking on it (in Windows) or by pressing the control key and tapping the mouse button at the same time (on a Mac); alternatively, you can use an online thesaurus like Miriam-Webster’s. Such sites not only provide useful lists of synonyms, but also antonyms (words with the opposite meaning), related words and phrases.

For instance, notice that in the opening paragraph of this blog post, I deliberately cut down the number of times I used the word “reading,” even though that was what I was writing about. Also, in the third sentence, I use the word “trick” in referring to what my instructor did, while in the opening of the second paragraph I used the “gimmick” instead. The process of doing so is not always easy, as you may have difficulty in finding an exact equivalent to such common words as (pardon the repetition) “reading,” but it’s worth the effort.