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Pooh-Bah
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Included under unnecessary expressions are phrases such as "In my opinion", "but I think that....", "However in my own experience....", "It seems apparent to me that...." etc etc
..since if it weren't your opinion you wouldn't assert it
That's my opinion Dale, I am not sure what prescriptivist rule about these phrases you are referring too. the word tautalogy seems to be a descriptor rather than a rule.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Not only that, but you can assert it if it's more than your opinion or just something you think. You may know it as an established fact. As for noting that your experience differs from others is also not a tautology. You would be remiss in claiming something as an established fact if it is only your opinion, something you think, or merely what you have yourself experienced.
Not that there's anything wrong with tautologies.
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Pooh-Bah
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Fal I guess while you would concur that in my own defense I did admit "tautology" might not conceivably be the right word, I must assert though with the most profound reservations as a matter of conjecture with which possibly few would disagree, except sometimes,
"You would be remiss in claiming something as an established fact if it is only your opinion, something you think, or merely what you have yourself experienced."
Fal I somewhat hesitatingly, I believe most might argue, thank you, though to some extent I feel compelled to in effect somewhat totally disagree. I would maintain with only personal presentiments there may be some special conditions in which you might contend to my satisfaction a qualifier possibly to be be appropriate but in my opinion, in general they're unnecessary except conceivably sometimes when the opposite tack is apparently called for, it seems to me, despite some possible ingemination, you must agree
Obviously to most of us of course it would be remiss under certain specific conditions to maintain "It is an established fact that Obama doesn't believe in God" though on the other hand in my estimation it would of course be all right to say, "Obviously he is lying," I think many might assert if properly approached under the right circumstances
But getting back to iteracy (if that's the right word) another of my pet peeves is the redundancy in expressions like "lift up" or "slash down" although I suppose you could credibly disagree, or so it might appear, at least in my own way of looking at things, wouldn't you say
...though I opine, with your permission, somewhat querulously to be sure, at least in the way a prescriptivist considers the proposition, that although you might not accord in toto, that many if not most participants might if asked endorse the elimination of much unnecessary verbiage
dalehileman
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Pooh-Bah
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The unnecessary verbiage may be annoying but there is no concise rule about it that I know.
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Carpal Tunnel
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yes, it certainly does seem to be annoying. furthermoreover, and in the second place, it doesn't seem to fit, and detracts from, what zmjezhd is looking for?! (zmj, how about a summary of what you've got out of this so far, if anything..)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Fal I somewhat hesitatingly, I believe most might argue, thank you, though to some extent I feel compelled to in effect somewhat totally disagree. I would maintain with only personal presentiments there may be some special conditions in which you might contend to my satisfaction a qualifier possibly to be be appropriate but in my opinion, in general they're unnecessary except conceivably sometimes when the opposite tack is apparently called for, it seems to me, despite some possible ingemination, you must agree
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
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Carpal Tunnel
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how about a summary of what you've got out of this so far, if anything
Sure.
1. Not splitting infinitives.
2. Not ending sentences with a preposition.
3. Not starting a sentence with a conjunction.
4. Not using they as a singular non-gender-specific pronoun.
5. Eschewing the passive voice.
6. Eschewing tautology or redundancy.
7a. Not verbing nouns.
7b. Not nouning verbs.
8. Not using decimate with the sense of destroy.
9. Not using none or all of with the plural form of verbs.
10. The that-which rule.
11. Not using modifiers with unique.
They fall into a couple of broad categories:
a. Usage preferences mis-categorized as grammatical rules.
b. Eschewing polysemy in lexical items.
[Added some I forgot about earlier.]
Last edited by zmjezhd; 09/05/09 02:58 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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that/which would give you ten, or have you dropped that?
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that/which would give you ten, or have you dropped that?
Yes, I added that and the unqualified unique ukase, too.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Pooh-Bah
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Here's a listing up with which I cannot put
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