Functional Redundancy and Ellipsis
as Strategies in Reading and Writing
KEITH GRANT-DAVIE
Parkinson's Law states that work tends to expand to fill the time available for
completing it. A variation might describe the elasticity of language: words
can be multiplied to fill the space available for expressing an idea. In light of
this law, most writing textbooks preach the virtue of conciseness, especially
those that focus on technical writing (e.g. Burnett 309-12; Lannon 263-73;
Reep 156-57; Shelton 17-22; VanAlstyne and Maddison 14-16). A typical
section in such texts demonstrates how to recognize and eradicate problems
like redundant pairs ("benefits and advantages"), redundant modifiers ("mandatory requirement"), redundant categories ("rectangular in shape"), phrases used where words would do ("at this point in time" instead of "now"), and
empty sentence openings: "There is a strong likelihood of rain tomorrow"
rather than "Rain is very likely tomorrow." Dietrich Rathjens identifies
brevity as one of the definitive components of clarity in technical writing:
"Brevity means that we cut every word, phrase, or sentence, whenever
possible, to the extent that the intended meaning of the text is not altered"
(43). And for well over a decade, Richard Lanham has been urging writers
to calculate and reduce the "lard factor" in their writing (4).
Collectively, the sins listed above are called redundancy or wordiness.
Redundancy is widely seen as a kind of linguistic cholesterol, clogging the
arteries of our prose and impeding the efficient circulation of knowledge.
However, I will argue that, just as a more thorough understanding of
cholesterol reveals the existence of good cholesterol (HDL) as well as bad
(LDL), so a broader view on the principle of redundancy reveals its effectiveness in certain situations, particularly beyond the sentence level. In this
article I aim to revive the beneficial or functional sense of redundancy and
show that functional redundancy in writing need not be a contradiction in
terms. I believe a discussion of redundancy should include its opposite,
ellipsis, so I will define both terms, emphasizing the beneficial sense of each,
and then show how they appear in both reading and writing. In the latter part
of the article, to illustrate the pervasiveness of redundancy and ellipsis, I will
discuss examples of each in document design and in figures of speeCh. My
attention will mainly be on technical writing, but the principles I will discuss
may apply to other genres, too.
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The gist of my argument is that, while less is often better, using as few
words as necessary does not always mean using as few words as possible.
Students should learn to eliminate needless syntactic redundancy in the
contextofabroadertheoryofhowandwhytocreateredundancyorellipsis-a
theory which considers how readers read, what they need at certain points in
a text, how redundancy and ellipsis relate to each other, where they appear
in language, and how they affect the reading experience. I offer the ideas
discussed below as notes toward such a theory.
Redundancy and Ellipsis Defmed
Redundancy exists when more of the same thing is available, possibly in
another place or in another form. Redundancy involves reinforcement at a
level above the required minimum. It is characterized by amplification,
repetition, restatement, or the presence of comparable alternatives. Contingency plans create redundancy, as do spare keys and tape backup drives in
computers. Technical writing students bound for careers in
engineering-particularly structural, mechanical, or electrical-may already
be familiar with redundancy as a sound design principle used to improve
reliability. If the failure of a system is critical or likely, the parts that are most
prone to failure will have functional redundancy-a margin of excess
capability-built into or around them. Critical components will be duplicated or designed so that they can be bypassed if they develop a problem. In this
way, local failure of a part need not cause catastrophic failure of the whole
system.
The drawback of redundancy is that it reduces efficiency, adding weight
and expense to a design, but in a world where systems cannot be continuously
monitored and will almost inevitably fail-in a world governed by Murphy's
Law as well as by Parkinson's-redundancy remains a valuable method of
ensuring reliability in a variety of engineering applications. If all oil tankers
were built with the redundancy of a double hull, the "Exxon Valdez" might
have escaped infamy. NASA's Atlas II rocket has a Launcher Stabilization
System that keeps it steady during the critical period between the removal of
the mobile service tower and liftoff. Because hydraulic systems are relatively
unreliable, and because so much is at stake, the system has two individual
hydraulic circuits on each side of the launch vehicle. If one leaks, the other
will maintain pressure (Nakamura 33-35).
I offer these examples to make the point that redundancy can be a vital
safeguard, and to suggest that it plays a Similarly important role improving
the reliability of technical communication. The technical writer is seldom
available for readers to consult if the readers are confused, and misunderstandings obviously may have disastrous consequences. Furthermore, as I
will explain later, technical writing is often read in a way that increases the
chances of misunderstanding.
FunctionalRedundancy 457
While most textbooks urge conciseness, there have been a few scholars
who have swum against the stream. Nevin Laib argues for teaching amplification:
We need to encourage profuseness as well as concision, to teach not just brevity but also
loquacity, the ability to extend, vary, and expatiate upon one's subject at length, to shape,
build, augment, or alter the force and effect of communication, and to repeat oneself
inventively. (443)
This advice might sound antithetical to the traditional standards of efficiency
and economy we associate with professional writing, but Laib's words echo
those of Jimmie Killingsworth, Michael Gilbertson, and Joe Chew.
Killingsworth, Gilbertson, and Chew argue that although technical manuals
have been seen as the "most functional and laconic" form of technical
writing, they are comparable to epideictic discourse, and that "all the
classical authors on rhetoric suggest that amplification, making the speech
longer, not shorter, is the key to epideictic discourse" (17). They go on to
explain that amplification, employed judiciously, can help readers of manuals by telling them not just what to do but also why and how to do it, what to
avoid doing, and what alternative steps they can take to perform a task (2024).
The opposite of redundancy is ellipsis, defined broadly as the omission
of material that observers might expect to encounter. They may be able to
infer what is missing, or they may just be aware that something has been left
out, in which case observers become aware of a corresponding ellipsis or gap
in their knowledge. To illustrate with an anecdote, while visiting the ruins of
Conway Castle on the north coast of Wales last summer, I noticed a pattern
of holes on the inside surface of the stone walls. I saw these holes as ellipses,
inferring that something had once filled them, but I could not guess what,
which indicated an ellipsis in my schema for castle architecture. The guide
was able to fill that ellipsis in my knowledge by explaining that the holes had
been used for wooden scaffolding. Readers recognize ellipses in text when
they notice that words or ideas have been implied or invoked but not stated,
and they notice ellipses in their own knowledge when they are unable to fill
the ellipses in the text. When I referred to Murphy's Law three paragraphs
ago, the sentence contained a highly predictable syntactic ellipsis (the
omission of "Law" after "Parkinson's"). Whether my reliance on readers to
supply the definition of Murphy's Law constituted an ellipsis of information
is debatable. Because syntax follows widely held conventions familiar to most
readers, sentence-level ellipsis is relatively easy to spot. On the other hand,
ellipsis of information or meaning is a function of readers' background
knowledge of subject matter rather than language, and that knowledge can
vary widely amongst readers. I will return to this point later in this discussion.
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Redundancy and Ellipsis in Reading
A text becomes redundant when it represents or invokes information that
readers already have, either because they knew the information before
reading the text or because it was presented earlier in the text. This definition
helps show, as Alice Horning has argued, that coherence and readability
require a certain level of redundancy. The presence of overlapping information or cohesive ties between sentences creates redundancy, which contributes to the coherence of a text by adhering to the given-new contract,
presenting readers with new information in the context of familiar or given
information (Horning, "Readable Writing" 137-141; Psycholinguistics 65).
For a text to be readable, there must be some overlap of information within
the text and some overlap between the text and readers' prior knowledge.
The more easily readers can relate new information to what they already
know, the more easily they can understand and retain that information.
Frank Smith and other reading theorists have explained that readers
make good use of the inherent redundancy of language-the existence of
alternative cues that suggest the meaning ofwhat is on the page. Redundancy
lets us recognize a word on the basis not only of its individual letters but also
our knowledge of its shape, sound, syntactic context, and semantic context
(Frank Smith 56-57). Fahnestock explains how linguistiC knowledge provides the redundancy we need to understand unfamiliar technical discourse
by "reading backwards" ("Connection"). So, even writing judged to be very
concise is always functionally redundant in the sense that competent readers
can find in it multiple sources of information to help them recognize the
words and the meaning. Beginning readers have difficulty because they have
not yet orchestrated all these multiple, redundant pathways to meaning. We
can say that the redundancy is built into the language, but it is also true, as
Smith points out, that readers can only take advantage of that redundancy on
the page if they have the relevant background knowledge:
Put another way, there is no utility in redundancy in the text if it does not reflect
something the reader knows already, whether it involves the visual, orthographic,
syntactic, or semantic structureofwrillen language.... Redundancy, in otherwords, can
be equated with prior knowledge. In making use of redundancy, the reader makes use
of nonvisual information, using something that is already known to eliminate some
alternatives and thus reduce the amount of visual information that is required. (58)
The more readers already know about the subject matter and the rules of
language, the less they need to rely on gathering information off the page. So
redundancy-and by extension, ellipsis too-can be said to occur both in the
text and in the reader's knowledge.
I want to argue now that redundancy and ellipsis can also be found in the
way readers process text. If there is enough redundancy in the text or in the
reader's knowledge, the reader can shift into a high gear and employ elliptical
Functional Redundancy 459
reading methods like skimming, scanning, or speedreading-techniques that
involve sampling and attending to only a few oftheavailable cues on the page
or screen. Readers skim unfamiliar texts to get the gist of their meaning, and
they skim familiar texts to confirm their familiarity with the text and to check
that no new information is being presented. Scanning involves looking only
for a particular letter or word, or for specific information in a text. Readers
scan when they consult the phone book, look for a word in the dictionary, or
hunt for a particular reference in an article, though they use scanning in these
instances not because the information is already familiar but because most of
it is irrelevant to their current, very focused search. Computers do this kind
of reading very efficiently.
On the other hand, if readers find a text difficult because their reading
skills are not fully developed, or because the text is elliptical and they lack the
background knowledge to fill in the gaps, they are likely to compensate by
reading redundantly. Redundant reading is like shifting into four-wheeldrive. Readers who normally read rapidly and silently are likely to slow down
and use their voices. By saying the words aloud or using inner speech to
imagine the sounds of words, readers consciously employ a redundant
method of comprehension-a supplement to visual recognition of words.
Additional redundant reading methods include holding and reviewing the
sounds of the words in echoic memory and pausing to reread phrases or
sentences. A technical article from outside one's field of expertise or a text
in an unfamiliar foreign language would demand redundant reading, as
would modern poetry if it is elliptical in syntax or allusion. Allusion is
elliptical since it hints at other texts or ideas without being explicit. Students
who have been led to believe they ought to be able to speedread any text, with
full comprehension, often need to be reminded that difficult reading situations call for redundant reading methods.
However, ellipsis in a text does not always require redundant reading
methods if the reader has enough background knowledge. For readers who
are familiar with elliptical language like abbreviations, initials, or acronyms,
the ellipses become shortcuts to meaning, presenting readers with fewer
words or letters to wade through-just enough to allow understanding.
Classified ads, for example, often use a common vocabulary represented by
abbreviations (e.g. "SWM, 37, ISO SF"), and they assume readers who are so
familiar with those conventions that to use complete words would be needlessly redundant. All abbreviations are by definition elliptical, but their
ellipsis does not necessarily make reading them harder than reading the full
words they stand for. Table 1 lists examples of redundancy and ellipsis in
texts, in readers' background knowledge, and in their reading methods.
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Table 1
Examples ofRedundancy and Ellipsis in Texts, in Readers' Knowledge, and in Reading Methods:
Redundancy in the text helps accommodate elliptical reading methods; ellipsis in the text or
reader's knowledge may require readers to compensate with redundant reading methods.
Redundancy
In text:
Ellipsis
Repetition
Restatement
Metadiscourse
Given-new contract followed
Abundant cohesive tie
Figures of amplification
Informative headings
Captions for illustrations
Truncated syntax
Irony
Allusion
Implicatures
Hypertext links
Figures of compression
Abbreviations
Acronyms
In readers'
knowledge:
Good grasp of subject,
rhetorical situation,
linguistic knowledge,
vocabulary, etc.
Poor grasp of SUbject,
rhetorical situation,
linguistic knowledge,
vocabulary, etc.
In reading
methods:
Slow reading, pauses
Rereading
Reading aloud
Imagining sounds of words
Skimming
Scanning
Speedreading
"Hyperactive" reading
Ellipsis in Document Design
Redundancy and ellipsis can also be found in the structure oftexts. Elliptical
document design is characterized by a lack of orienting features, leaving
readers to make their own connections between parts of the text. A text
divided into many parts with no overview and few cross-references would be
elliptical in design. Ellipses in hypertext design occur at the links between
nodes of information if these links are not as fully or narrowly specified as in
well-structured, linear texts. The links are there, but as Jay David Bolter
explains, readers have more responsibility for developing coherence between
the nodes they link:
A hypertext has no canonical order. Every path defines an equally convincing and
appropriate reading, and in that simple fact the reader's relatinoship to the text changes
radically. A text as a network has no univocal sense; it is a multiplicity without the
imposition of a principle of domination. (25)
Endorsing Bolter's point, John Slatin suggests that the greatest value of
hypertext may be its ability to relate large amounts of material, but that
hypertext "is weakest when it comes to spelling out what these relationships
entail" (881).
Electronic mail may be another example of ellipsis in document design.
As correspondents become used to the medium, they tend to eliminate some
of the conventional features of letters. Salutations, opening sentences, and
formal closings can be omitted for at least three reasons. First, since the level
Functional Redundancy 461
of formality in e-mail correspondence is even lower than in memos, there may
be less call for polite preamble. Correspondents may feel free to plunge right
into their messages. Second, information about the sender is included
automatically in e-mail message headings (along with more information
about the message routing than most of us need), thereby establishing some
of the context. And third, due to the rapid transmission of messages there is
less need to reestablish context. If one e-mail message asks a question, the
reply, if prompt enough, may not need to refer to the question or enclose a
copy of it, but may open directly with the answer, as if the correspondents
were communicating face to face. How elliptical can an e-mail message be?
One that I sent (somewhat facetiously) in response to a question was simply
'''K.''-an abbreviation of "O.K." Then again, one might argue that some of
the practices of e-mail correspondents will seem elliptical only as long as
people think of these texts as letters instead of recognizing e-mail as a
communication medium in its own right, with its own conventions.
As I remarked near the beginning of this discussion, conventions of
syntax make it easy to identify ellipsis and redundancy at the sentence level.
We can readily spot extra words or missing words. And examples of
functional redundancy beyond the sentence level, like those I have mentioned above, are easy to find because we can see the repetition on the page.
I have discussed a couple of examples of ellipsis in document design, but
generally speaking, ellipsis is harder to identify above the syntactic level. We
can recognize a simple enthymeme (e.g. the box elder is a broadleaf tree, so
it provides little shade in winter) as an elliptical form of a syllogism, and it is
usually easy to infer the major premise missing from the enthymeme. But
ellipsis occurs wherever readers are aware of information the writer appears
to have implied but has not stated, and inferring that information at levels of
abstraction much higher than the sentence level becomes harder as the
possibilities multiply exponentially. What one reader reads between the
lines of a text may not be the same as what another infers. And of course a
text may also be elliptical in its intent. Ironic discourse, for instance, means
more than it says, relying on readers to fill in the missing sense.
Ellipsis in language seems to have two main functions: first, it allows
efficient reading if the reader has enough background knowledge to allow
ready infererence of what has been omitted; and second, by requiring readers
to make inferences, it makes the writing more engaging, more intellectually
or aesthetically stimulating. Elliptical uses of language can be suggestive,
denying full disclosure, inviting the reader to participate in the making of
meaning. Both these functions of ellipsis can have the effect of creating a
bond of respect and shared assumptions between the author and the reader.
They become collaborators in the discourse. Consequently, the elliptical text
is exclusive in the sense that it is not designed for all readers, just for those
who can bridge the gaps within the text. And from its gaps one can infer the
intended readers-those the author assumes can supply missing information
462 lAC
or missing warrants or assumptions that support an argument. In this way,
too, elliptical texts may shape their audiences, implying that they hold, or
should hold, certain beliefs or knowledge.
Technical writing obviously makes use of the first function of elliptical
language-to allow efficient reading-but can it take advantage as well ofthe
second function? Ifwe accept that technical language can be highly rhetorical, working on its readers in ways that they might not notice, then the answer
must be "yes." Evidence to support that answer can be found in Fahnestock's
analyses of scientific writing ("Connection"; "Tactics"). Writers of any kind
of scientific, technical, or professional prose must routinely decide what to
state and what to suppress or leave as implied assumptions. To the extent that
they can, readers instinctively and obligingly fill in ellipses left by writers,
whether at the syntactic or the semantic level, and the skillful writer can take
advantage of that propensity. Learning to recognize ellipses in arguments,
then, is an essential critical reading skill, helping readers to challenge the
implications they are being led to accept.
Redundancy in Document Design
Table 1 lists examples of redundancy in text that operate atthe sentence level,
but it also includes some that are recognizable as good principles of document design. Most technical writing textbooks consider redundancy anathema, but few recognize that it operates in the engineering sense (as a form of
reliability assurance) in the kind offunctional repetition that characterizes
the structure of many kinds of technical writing. Hendrickson's Writing for
Accountants (16-18) and Pfeiffer's Technical Writing: A Practical Approach
are two recent exceptions that show an enlightened understanding of redundancy and repetition.
While needless redundancy at the sentence level impedes busy readers,
the busyness of those readers means that, faced with a lengthy report and
limited time, they will probably not read the whole document cover to cover,
in sequence, carefully, and at one sitting. Instead, they will likely read
selectively, either following a practiced search strategy for just the information they need or engaging in more casual browsing, turning the pages in
either direction, looking at the pictures, and sampling fragments of text out
of sequence. The reading may also be interrupted by telephone calls,
unexpected visits, appointments, and other distractions. Because this elliptical style of reading resembles what readers tend to do with hypertexts
(Carliner 39-40), I call it "hyperactive" reading.
Documents destined to be read hyperactively under these conditions
need to be designed robustly, which means that writers need to repeat and
emphasize important information in several different places to ensure that
the various readers with their different reading methods and purposes will all
find what they need (Pfeiffer 63-64). Furthermore, multiple readers will
probably each read the document in a slightly different way. The greater the
Functional Redundancy 463
number of readers and the longer the document, the more redundancy
should be built into it. The trick is to try to meet the needs of all the readers
while inconveniencing anyone reader as little as possible, but I would suggest
that in most kinds of writing it is better to include a little too much
redundancy, and make some readers compensate by skimming, than to err on
the side of ellipsis and make otherreaders work harder at interpretation. Too
much redundancy is a nuisance, and if poorly designed it may obscure
important points, but excessive ellipsis can be a more serious impediment for
readers.
A common form of redundancy in document design is
metadiscourse-passages that remind readers what they have read and
announce what they are about to read. Placed prominently at the beginnings
or ends of paragraphs where readers who skim are more likely to notice it,
metadiscourse helps accommodate elliptical reading. Another way to ensure
that elliptical readers catch the most important information in a report is to
include the information in well-written section headings. These headings
maybe both elliptical and redundant: elliptical in syntax ifthey take the form
ofterse phrases rather than complete clauses, and redundant in the sense that
the information in a heading is repeated elsewhere in the text-in the section
it heads and perhaps also in a table of contents compiled from the headings
in the body of the report.
A third application of functional redundancy in document design is to
integrate visual aids with text. A well-integrated illustration will have an
informative heading and perhaps a caption too, providing essential explanations for readers who look at the figures before reading the text. And if
readers arrive at the illustration by way of the text, they will likely be able to
interpret the illustration more efficiently if the surrounding text discusses it.
Including metadiscourse, headings, and captions is standard advice in
technical writing textbooks. Holland, Charrow, and Wright, for example,
recommend most ofthese techniques as ways of writing to multiple audiences, for whom they also suggest including more and less technical versions of
the same information (41). My purpose in pointing to these practices as
instances of redundancy in document design is to suggest a more comprehensive theoretical framework for them, to explain why they work in terms of
what readers do. The principles of redundancy and ellipsis underlie and
interrelate a variety of good writing practices.
Repeating information not only in different places in a document but
also in different ways may be helpful, although opinions differ on the value
of "elegant variation" (the use of synonyms to avoid repeating wordS). The
conventional wisdom in technical writing textbooks is that elegant variation
can cause confusion if readers do not realize that the different words all refer
to the same thing (Brusaw, Alred, and Oliu 217; Houp and Pearsall 150).
Laib concedes that elegant variation may be abused but argues that, if used
well, it "becomes explication, translation, and analogy" (448).
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At some basic or essential level the art of explanation is no more than paraphrase,
repetition, elaboration, and emphasis. It 'retells' the concept or story, using different
words, different levels of generality, different styles, different rhetorical modes, and
different perspectives to clarify the original byreiteration .... Restatement helps readers
understand the concept. Those who do not grasp an idea when it is first articulated may
understand it better when it is phrased differently or when the subject is described from
a different perspective. (449)
1 would add two points to Laib's arguments. The first is that amplifying key
points by restatement offers readers more time to dwell on them, remember
relevant background knowledge, and let the points sink in. Ifwriters make
key points too concisely and move on immediately to other matters, readers
may feel the points have gone by them too quickly. They will be forced to stop,
back up, and reread the passage. While that kind of redundant reading can
be a useful comprehension strategy, it interrupts the forward progress of
reading. Building a little redundancy into the text where it might be needed
can save readers the trouble of reading.
The second point 1would add is that restatement may actually contribute
to the perceived conciseness of the writer. Writers tend to be most concise
at places where they restate in a nutshell a point they have just explained at
greater length. Alone, the "nutshell" restatement might not be developed
enough to convey the point clearly, but with the support of the lengthier
explanation it follows, it can provide readers with a readily portable idea. The
presence of these brief, redundant restatements of main points may contribute to a reader's sense of conciseness as much as actual brevity does. Kim
Sydow Campbell, for example, argues that cohesion in a text is created by
repeating semantic and structural elements: "This repetition of form provides a uniform background against which the semantic differences in a text
are foregrounded and therefore more easily perceived" (229). An illustration of Campbell's argument might be to take a sentence like "Redundancy
is characterized by repetition, while omission is the main feature of ellipsis"
and revise it to include more structural repetition: "Redundancy is characterized by repetition, while ellipsis is characterized by omission." The similarities in structure and wording of the two sentences emphasize the contrast
between the important words, which are different. However, it seems to me
we might heighten the contrast further by keeping the structural repetition
but creating ellipsis by using a single verb to serve two clauses in the same
sense: "Redundancy is characterized by repetition, ellipsis by omission."
Ellipsis and Redundancy in Figures of Speech
Many figures of speech, some more flamboyant than others, operate by
creating redundancy or ellipsis within or between sentences. Asyndeton is an
elliptical figure of speech that uses fewer conjunctions than normal to link
the items in a series: "1 came, 1 saw, I conquered"; or, to update Caesar's
words for the modern workplace, "Megacorp follows a simple philosophy: it
Functional Redundancy 465
enters a market, it scouts the competition, it buys them out." (While these
examples of asyndeton employ ellipsis, they also use some of the structural
repetition that Campbell notes. A more elliptical but less effective version
of Caesar's remarks, eliminating the repetition, would be "I came, saw,
conquered.") The figure of absolute ellipsis omits a word or words not
readily inferrable from the syntax alone: "Three strikes and you're out"
(which requires a grasp of baseball to be understOOd).
The elliptical figure in the sentence, "Redundancy is characterized by
repetition, ellipsis by omission" can be classified in George Puttenham's
scheme as zeugma-or more precisely, prozeugma (175-76). Zeugma and
syllepsis are similar elliptical figures, syllepsis being a construction in which
one word seems to apply equally to two others but does not. Syllepsis may
involve a grammatical anomaly, as in this example of a singular verb serving
both singular and plural subjects: "The larger screw threads counterclockwise, all the others clockwise"; or it may be semantic, as in this example of
metaphorical and literal expressions branching from the same verb: "In Las
Vegas he lost his head and his inheritance." Puttenham makes a clear
contrast between syllepsis, whether grammatical or metaphorical,andzeugma,
which he defines as an elliptical figure involving neither grammatical nor
metaphorical play. For Puttenham, a zeugma could simply be a construction
where two or more subjects share a single predicate: "Fellowes and friends
and kinne forsooke me quite" (175). However, since Puttenham's day, as the
Oxford English Dictionary notes, syllepsis and zeugma have become confused
and zeugma commonly denotes a metaphorical construction. For instance,
Webster's II New Riverside University Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin, 1984)
defines both terms as having metaphorical elements, and offers very similar
examples to illustrate syllepsis ("We lost our coats and our tempers") and
zeugma ("We changed our minds and our clothes"). On the other hand, the
1993 edition of Merriam Webster's College Dictionary recognizes the distinction Puttenham makes between grammatical and metaphorical syllepsis but
equates zeugma with the metaphorical kind of syllepsis ("She opened her
door and her heart to the lonely boy").
This shift in the definition of zeugma might seem but a footnote to the
evolution of the English language, a splitting of etymological hairs that only
a cloistered rhetorician could love; however, I believe that this shift actually
reflects a telling and regrettable shift in attitudes towards figures of speech.
We tend now to make a clear but perhaps simplistic distinction between
figurative language and plain language. Figures of speech are thought to
belong only in "creative" writing and to have no place in professional or
technical writing. One problem with this belief is that metaphorical language, used carefully, can be a powerful tool in technical writing, as some
scholars have shown (see Colby; Hoffman; Plung). A striking example of
metaphor appeared in a paper about the effects of various kinds of damage
on the strength of ships' hulls. The paper includes a photograph showing how
466 JAC
water pressure can cause hull plates to become concave between the ribs of
a ship's frame. The author calls these indentations "'hungry horse' deformations" (C. S. Smith 97). This metaphor is both elliptical and redundant:
elliptical in the sense that in just two words it evokes a comparison between
a ship's hull and the image of an undernourished animal whose ribs are
showing through its skin-an image the author assumed all readers could
supply-and redundant in the sense that it supplements the technical explanation of the deformations. The net effect is to give readers a memorable
image of the phenomenon.
One could argue the "hungry horse" example is an exception proving the
rule that figurative language does not usually belong in workplace discourse,
and I would certainly not recommend we teach our technical writing students
to ornament their papers with masses of purple metaphors. However-and
this is a second problem with the belief that figurative language belongs only
in creative writing-not all figurative language is metaphorical. A good deal
of figurative language is based on redundancy or ellipSiS, characteristics that
can be found in any genre. In other words, rather than seeing figurative
language as a particular and quite different kind of language that should be
taught only in literature or creative writing classes, I believe we should show
our technical writing students-and indeed all our writing students-how
redundancy and ellipsis can be manipulated to produce figurative language,
some of it metaphorical, some of it not, some of it appropriate for technical
writing, some of it not. Ifwe broaden our view of figurative language in this
way, we may find that workplace writing includes not just the occasional
metaphor but also its more reticent cousins, the utilitarian figurative elements like listing (which I will discuss further below) that are important,
everyday tools of professional writers. Rather than accepting the traditional
divide between creative and technical writing, I prefer to see a continuum
between them, recognizing that they share some common skills and that the
conventions of technical writing include figurative elements.
Some figures of speech create redundancy by repetition or addition.
Polysyndeton uses more conjunctions than necessary to link the items in a
series, as in the familiar inscription on the main Manhattan Post Office:
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers
from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Epistrophe repeats
the same word or phrase at the end of each clause in a sequence, as in this
passage from the Bible: "When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood
as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things" (1 Cor. 13.11). Anaphorarepeats the same word or phrase at the start
of each sentence in a passage, as in this excerpt from Winston Churchill's
"Dunkirk" speech demonstrates:
We shall not flag or fail. 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,
Functional Redundancy 467
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.. " (297)
Books on figures of speech are usually good at identifying, defining, and
giving examples of the various figures, but few of them adequately discuss
their rhetorical effects. They neglect to say why a writer should employ them.
One way to demonstrate the function of figurative language is to see what
happens when a passage is revised to eliminate its redundancy or fill in its
ellipses. For instance, if we trim the redundancy in Churchill's speech to a
minimum, it might look like this:
We shall defend our Island by fighting, at any cost and without surrender, in these places:
• France
• seas and oceans
• air (with growing confidence and strength)
• beaches and landing grounds
• fields
• streets
• hills
Reducing Churchill's speech to a list illustrates two points that are important
to my argument. First, replacing redundancy with ellipsis can change the
meaning of a passage entirely. Not only has the revision purged the
emotion-the bullheadedness-from Churchill's language, it has also shifted
the emphasis. The repetition in the original version stressed the strength and
determina tion of the resistance by repeating varia tions on the expression "we
shall fight." By no longer repeating the given information, the revised
version shifts attention away from the point that fighting will be everywhere
and without surrender, placing it instead on specific locations for the
fighting-information that was of secondary importance to Churchill's message. What was a fiery piece of exhortation intended to rally a populace
becomes an unemotional agenda for action. In the context of a wartime
speech to England's House of Commons, redundancy was rhetorically more
effective than rigorous economy of expression. In a different rhetorical
situation, the reverse might be true, and in fact Churchill is known to have
encouraged concise memos from his staff.
My second point about the revision is that while changing redundancy to
ellipsis purged the emotion from the original, it did not eliminate the
figurative language of the original. It simply changed it from a redundant
figure (anaphora) to an elliptical one (something close to zeugma, as
Puttenham defines it). I would suggest we might consider this kind of list as
an example of a utilitarian figure of speeCh.
Conclusion
When we teach students to recognize redundancy and ellipsis in what they
read and write, we should not teach them to shun either instinctively. Rather,
we should try to teach them the difference between functional redundancy
468 lAC
and needless redundancy, between expandable prose and expendable prose,
between ellipsis that engages readers and ellipsis that alienates them. Extreme redundancy or ellipsis is not necessarily excessive; it depends entirely
on the rhetorical situation-who is reading, what is being written, and what
needs to be emphasized. Laib argues that we should teach "not a prescriptively balanced style but proportion, equity, and dialectic in the values we
teach, so that in their own writing students can strike a balance that fits the
occasion" (457). I would argue we should not teach students to ask themselves, "Is there redundancy in my writing and how can I get rid of it?" but
rather, "Have I expanded or condensed my writing and repeated information
at the appropriate places for my readers?"
Finding the right proportions of redundancy and ellipsis for a given topic
and a more or less given (but not entirely known) combination of readers is
a Challenge. I have found myself attending to it at all stages of composing this
paper, right through the final editorial changes. Comments from anonymous
reviewers on earlier drafts helped me reinforce certain load-bearing passages
and pare down others where I learned I could count on my readers to bear
some of the burden of comprehension. Adding and removing words is a
fundamental activity of revision, but writing instruction seldom provides
students with a coherent theory of when and why to add or remove. Explaining redundancy and ellipsis in terms of what readers do in response to those
features contributes to such a theory. It does not make writing any simpler
or easier, but it does offer writers a powerful principle for revising.
Utah State University
Logan, Utah
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