redundancies

[jack belck]

Should one correct or merely cringe at such redundancies as past history/experience; penetrate through; red color; financial prosperity; revert back?

 

[freezeframe]

It depends on the kind of persona you're fashioning for yourself.

What's redundant about "financial prosperity"?

 

[jack belck]

Only the Readers' Digest and similar self-help media could conjoin penury and prosperity.

 

[Barb_D]

Only the Readers' Digest and similar self-help media could conjoin penury and prosperity.

Huh? You can have financial hardship or financial prosperity.

You can have propserity arising from health, friends, love, talents, etc, in additional financial.

If you're a teacher, you can point out phrases that are redundant to imrpove your students' writing style. If you're considering correcting that common utterances of acquaintances, I strongly suggest you don't.

Besides, I enjoy Readers' Digest and would never categorize it as "self-help." So perhaps you and I simply won't see eye to eye on anything.

 

[jack belck]

With 50 years experience as an editor, my job has always been to correct errors in the language's use, an almost impossible job these days, given that one misuse will spread rapidly, thanks to the likes of Twitter: the next one knows, "multiple" has replaced "some", "many", "a few" "several". Stemming that tide proves impossible, even when a college perfessor (sic) uses, "I felt kind of sad."

What is sad about this is that we have more and more umbrella words, like "awesome", that replace shades of meaning. The English teacher is criticized for strangling pupils' right to self-expression, for not allowing our "living" language to be expressed whatever way they wish to express it,

As Mencken said, The barbarians are among us."

 

[freezeframe]

With 50 years experience as an editor, my job has always been to correct errors in the language's use, an almost impossible job these days, given that one misuse will spread rapidly, thanks to the likes of Twitter: the next one knows, "multiple" has replaced "some", "many", "a few" "several". Stemming that tide proves impossible, even when a college perfessor (sic) uses, "I felt kind of sad."

What is sad about this is that we have more and more umbrella words, like "awesome", that replace shades of meaning. The English teacher is criticized for strangling pupils' right to self-expression, for not allowing our "living" language to be expressed whatever way they wish to express it,

As Mencken said, The barbarians are among us."

Oh no, the language is evolving. This makes me feel kinda sad.



Seriously, raging against it will just raise your blood pressure. It's much healthier to accept that there are many ways to see language, just as there are many ways to see just about everything else in this universe. Not everyone will share your point of view. The sooner one learns to deal with this in a productive manner, the better their life will be.

best of luck

 

[5jj]

Oh no, the language is evolving.

Indeed. For example, when I was at school, I would not have been allowed to get away with jach belck's "the language's use". - it would have had to be "the use of language". I would also have had to put inverted commas round the words I have italicised in the following:

Should one correct or merely cringe at such redundancies as past history/experience; penetrate through; red color; financial prosperity; revert back?

- and possibly put some form of punctuation after 'as'.

Quite apart from natural evolution in language, opinions on style and taste have always been a little subjective.

 

[Tdol]

But those Barbarians have been among us for hundreds of years with their redundancies and clichés, but somehow the language manages to keep going. I can see that the lot of an editor may well not be an entirely happy one with the churnalism pouring out across the internet, but I find the underlying sameness of content and thinking more worrying.

 

[5jj]

But those Barbarians have been among us for hundreds of years with their redundancies and clichés, but somehow the language manages to keep going. I can see that the lot of an editor may well not be an entirely happy one with the churnalism pouring out across the internet, but I find the underlying sameness of content and thinking more worrying.

Barbarian!

You started a sentence with 'But'.
You used 'but' three times in sixty-one words. Have you not heard of such alternatives as 'though', 'although' and ''however'?
Is it really necessary to use such barbaric neologisms as 'churnalism'?
You capitalised 'Barbarians' unnecessarily.

If you insist on producing such semi-literate nonsense, I shall make a formal complaint to the administrator of this forum, and request that you be banned forthwith.

 

[Tdol]

Consider me banned.

 

[freezeframe]

But those Barbarians have been among us for hundreds of years with their redundancies and clichés, but somehow the language manages to keep going. I can see that the lot of an editor may well not be an entirely happy one with the churnalism pouring out across the internet, but I find the underlying sameness of content and thinking more worrying.

Good point.

The end of the civilization brought on by misused commas and words du jour has been upon us for a very long time. If Dadaism didn't kill language as we know it, Twitter has no chance.

There's an interesting contradiction in OP's post -- lament the perceived loss of expressivity while desiring return to some rules of the yesteryear... Wouldn't the rules followed slavishly in a rapidly changing world atrophy any language and result in the loss of expressivity anyway?

Anyway, I'm going to play WoW now lolz