February 21, 2008: Issue 227
Watch out for tautologies, sentences that basically say “up is up” or “blue is blue.” Such truisms often hide under piles of modifiers.
Take this sentence:
A sleek, handy pot filler smartly placed in the green marble-topped island fills oversize pasta pots quickly without forcing the cook to lug ungainly pans of water.
Strip it down to subject, verb, and object, and you get this:
A pot filler fills pots.
To avoid this problem, start with the simplest possible sentence—then add modifiers judiciously.
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