Avoiding Overuse of a word

A form of redundancy that can be particularly annoying to your readers is to have the same word appear an inordinate number of times. Sometimes writers are so intent on emphasizing an important term or concept that they use it to death, to the point where it is more distracting than informative.

Strategies to get around this include using pronouns, synonyms and elliptical constructions, or dropping unnecessary references altogether. If you are having a hard time coming up with synonyms, remember that a thesaurus can be an invaluable tool.

EXAMPLE 1

The family-oriented approach to medical care involves recognizing that an ailment of one family member will have an impact on all family members. A family is continually subject to both the inner pressures coming from its own members and to outer pressures that affect family members. A serious illness of one of its members increases both the internal and external demands placed on the family. Internally, the illness of a family member forces an adaptation by other family members of their roles and expectations. Externally, in this age of specialized medicine, a family member's illness typically demands interaction with multiple health care settings and personnel. Thus, a key focus of family assessment in health-related research and practice must be on family stress and coping.

This passage, just six sentences long, contains the word family eleven times and member (or members) eight times. These counts can easily be reduced to four and three, respectively.

BETTER: The family-oriented approach to medical care involves recognizing that an ailment of one family member will have an impact on all. A family is continually subject to both inner and outer pressures, and a serious illness of one of its members increases both these types of pressure. Internally, the illness forces an adaptation by other members of their roles and expectations; externally, in this age of specialized medicine, it typically demands interaction with multiple health care settings and personnel. Thus, a key focus of family assessment in health-related research and practice must be on stress and coping.

EXAMPLE 2

The Software Development Manager program provides software development organizations with a mechanism for efficiently managing the components of a software application throughout all development stages of the application. Software Development Manager enables a group of software developers to create and manage multiple versions of a software application. This software manager program also maintains the integrity of the application by not allowing one developer to overwrite another developer's changes to the source.

Here, in three sentences, the word software appears seven times, develop (or some derivation of it) seven times, manage (or some derivation of it) five times and application four times. Below, these counts are reduced to three each.

BETTER: The Software Development Manager program provides a mechanism for efficiently managing the components of a software application throughout all stages of its development. This program enables a group of software developers to create and manage multiple versions of an application, and maintains the integrity of the application by not allowing one group member to overwrite the source changes of another.

Note: The advice about not overusing a word should not be taken to mean that it is a good idea to use different terminology to describe the same concept. In many fields, particularly those in science and technology, terms have very precise meanings, and calling the same thing by different names will only lead to confusion and misinterpretation. Although it is preferable to avoid using the same word over and over, never do so at the expense of clarity.

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