Collins Improve Your Writing Skills. Graham King

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СКАЧАТЬ got (a common one, this. Simply have is fine)

      the hoi polloi (as hoi means ‘the’, the is obviously redundant)

       hoist up

       hurry up

       important essentials

       in between

       inside of

       indirect allusion

      I saw it with my own eyes (who else’s?)

       join together

       joint cooperation

       just recently

       lend out

       link together

       lonely isolation

       meet together

       merge together

       mix together, mix things together

       more preferable

       mutual cooperation

       necessary requisite

       new beginner, new beginning

       new creation

       new innovation, new invention

       original source

       other alternative

       outside of

      over with (for ended, finished)

       pair of twins

       past history

       penetrate into

       personal friend

       polish up

       proceed onward

      raze to the ground (raze by itself means exactly that)

       really excellent

       recall back

       reduce down

       refer back

       relic of the past

       renew again

       repeat again

       revert back

       rise up

       safe haven

       seldom ever

       set a new world record

       settle up

       sink down

       still continue

       sufficient enough

       swallow down

       this day and age

       totally complete

       totally finished

       tiny little child

      unique means the only one of its kind. You can’t get much more unique than that.

      Not even quite unique, absolutely unique and utterly unique

       unexpected surprise

       unite together

       unjustly persecuted

       usual habit

       very pregnant

       viable alternative

      warm 75 degrees (of course 75 degrees is warm!)

       whether or not

       widow woman

      There are other forms of repetition, some intentional and some not. Writers have often used it for effect, for example in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

       Alone, alone, all, all alone,

       Alone on a wide wide sea!

      Or in this equally famous passage from a speech of Winston Churchill’s:

       We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

      Then there are those instances when, in writing, we manage to box ourselves into a corner with such irritating repetitions as, ‘Her opinion is, is that it will never work’; ‘The dealer admitted he had had the sideboard in his shop for two months’; ‘Not that that would bother her in the least’ and so on.

      Finally, take care with double negatives, distant cousins of pleonasm. Although they can be useful they are also often confusing. The bomb attack was not unexpected. If you lived in a terrorist-ridden area, where to be bombed sooner or later would be no great surprise, the double negative not unexpected is better for conveying a suspended kind of expectation than was expected or was no surprise.

      The puzzle for many writers is, why is I don’t know nothing about it considered to be unacceptable, while the Prime Minister is not unmindful СКАЧАТЬ