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I think this is an appropriate topic for the list. It's not just about using
"pre," it's about using unneccessary prefixes, words, expressions, etc. The
problem probably pre-dates (which I think is a legitimate use of "pre") the
written word. It's what William Strunk warned us about with his directive to
"Omit needless words!" It's about paring your writing down to the essential
elements, and eliminating the noise that distracts the reader and causes him to
throw the manual aside.
By the way, I watch more home improvement shows on HGTV than I probably should,
and my current pet peeves are "pre-drill" (used to be "drill a pilot hole,"
which was a perfectly good phrase), "paint out" (instead of just "paint"), and
"change out" (as in cabinet hardware--why not just "change"?).
OK, I've petted my pet peeve sufficiently for today.
Jo, who will now return to pre-indexing her manual
--
Jo Baer
Senior Technical Writer
TCF National Bank
Minneapolis, Minnesota
jbaer -at- -dot- tcfbank -dot- com
The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
Nicol Williamson
wordsync -at- swbell -dot- net wrote:
> In response to Stan Schwartz about using "pre":
>
> My pet peeve is "pre-reading assignment" for workshops. Surely
> "preworkshop assignment" is better. How can you pre-read? Not sure this is
> an appropriate topic for the list, but you hit one of my hot buttons. I
> like the question.
>
> Thanks,
> Pat Glass
> wordsync -at- swbell -dot- net
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