Thursday, March 31, 2011

Repetitive Nouns & Verbs

I was requested to proofread a friend's college essay. I was reading through it and I found a certain mistake that I find common in a lot of literature. The mistake is the unneeded use of Synonyms.

For example:

"The girl had blue eyes and was exceptionally tall. She was feeling depressed and sad..."

In this example, the author uses "depressed" and "sad" to portray the girl's emotions. However, depressed and sad are basically the same thing. Having both of them holds no purpose other than to increase word count. Same can be said for verbs..

"He was exhausted from all his running and jogging.

The same situation applies here. Unless you are going into the specifics of running and jogging, they are the same thing, and you should get rid of one to stay efficient.



May your joy in writing lead you to happiness,

Jay

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