Thursday, November 1, 2012

Avoiding redundancy (5)

Here are three redundancies that you often hear and sometimes read:

MLB baseball

MLB is an acronym for Major League Baseball, the name of the professional baseball league that consists of teams that play in the American League and National League. Therefore, when you say “MLB baseball,” you are actually saying “Major League Baseball baseball.”

PIN number

PIN is an acronym for personal identification number. Therefore, when you say “PIN number,” you are actually saying “personal identification number number.”

And et cetera

Et cetera is Latin for and others. So when you say “And et cetera,” you are actually saying “and and others.”

The Takeaway: Whether you are speaking or writing, be careful to avoid redundancy. If you use a lot of redundancies, your intelligent listeners or readers may conclude that you are ill-educated, stupid or careless.

See disclaimer.

1 comment:

  1. To go with the PIN number, there's the ATM machine. People used to say pizza pie until it sunk in that pizza means pie. One that trips me up is hoi polloi -- not writing "the hoi polloi."