Say it again, Sam?

My old Aunt Christie used to regale us with tales of her childhood. My favorite story is the one about a joke that drove her uncles and her aunts up the wall.

She would say, when she was about six, “Pete and Repeat were sitting on a log. Pete fell off. Who was left?” Her uncle or aunt, any one of them playing along, would reply, “Repeat.” Then little Christie would laugh and laugh and say again, “Pete and Repeat were sitting on a log. Pete fell off. Who was left?”

After a while, five minutes or so, the uncle or aunt of the time would grow tired, but Christie kept on and on. She totally loved the joke and would tell it again and again…and all over again. Not knowing that the joke might (and did) grow stale, she just wouldn’t stop. Her family was nice enough to indulge her…some of the time.

The term redundancy comes to mind when considering both the joke and a decided tendency of writers to fall back on something they’ve already said and then say it again when they’ve run out of anything new to add. Trust me – repeating the same idea becomes tiresome for the reader very quickly.

My advice is the following:
· Double check supporting examples and do not use the same one over and over again, even with slightly different phrasing.
· Review each paragraph to be certain the gist of it is not basically the same as a preceding or following paragraph.
· When a new thought fails to appear, set the essay aside for a while and come back with a refreshed brain - and something new to add.
· Check, double check even, for often repeated words; they often (get it?) indicate repeated ideas, not always, though.
· Finally, read what you’ve written as if you’re reading it for the first time to make sure you’ve kept it interesting.

See you next time the breeze is cool, the sun is up, and the waves roll into view! ‘Til then, hang ten!