Pleonasms at 4am in the morning

English is so precise! There’s no need for extra words when one word does the job by definition. 

Pleonasms: saying it twice

There's a name for this annoying habit, and it sounds ominous: pleonasm. It's where an extra word or words are added to a word that already contains the meaning you want. A familiar example is future plans. A plan is something that you are proposing to do, so you don’t need ‘future’. 

Then there’s ‘could’. It already implies that an action is possible. So why clutter it up, using could potentially?

And if we’re talking about the time, consider the handy ‘am’. It’s short for the Latin ante meridian (before midday = in the morning). So we only need to say, The alarm rang at 3am. Not 3am in the morning. The other option is The alarm rang at 3 in the morning. (By the way, pm stands for post meridian = after midday.)

Another pointless repetition is new innovation. By itself, ‘innovation’ means a new method, product, process, etc. It comes from the Latin novus, meaning new. Ditch the ‘new’. 

Cut them in half  

Once you’re onto it, you’ll notice this padding everywhere. Read through your writing carefully and delete the redundant words. It’s one more technique for being succinct.

Examples

We offer a variety of [different] treatments
Expand the [size of the] floor area
Launch a [new] product
Unlock your [future] potential
They [first] introduced the service in 2015

Here are some more double-ups that are easy to use without thinking …

[Added] bonus
[Advance] warning
[Awkward] predicament
[Brief] summary
[Close] proximity
[Colour] palette
[Completely] fill
Fuse [together]
Green [in colour]
[Old] custom
[Originally] conceived
Reflect [back]
[Regular] routine
Revert [back]
[Short] summary

Pleonasms with acronyms

You also see this repetition with acronyms, where a word is already abbreviated:  

PIN number
HIV virus
ATM machine
GPS system
Please RSVP (RSVP stands for the French Répondez s’il vous plaît – Please reply)