While reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, I noticed that he repeats the word aggregate multiple times throughout the book. Since I live with a parent who is, in a way, a major English fanatic and notices when words are repeated in anything. I've slowly gotten this same thing that my mother has and I saw this. It bothered me immensely whenever aggregate was used.
There are so many synonyms for aggregate that Shirky could have used instead of aggregate. He could have used collection, assemblage, conglomerate, combined, composite and many others. For any other people who notice things like this, it may have bothered them as well.
I saw a lot of this in Brave New World as well! I told a classmate that I kept seeing the same words multiple times, such as pneumatic, and he didn't seem to notice at all. I thought I was going crazy or something, but I'm glad that somebody else notices these things too.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading an old novella recently, I realized the author was constantly using the word melancholy as a description word for everything and it frustrated me to the point where I had to stop reading it for a short period of time. I never saw repetition as an issue in English because I believed it gave good emphasis but getting more into reading these past few years have shown me the level of irritation and disinterest that can grow from what I can only politely describe as "over-emphasis". I can't look at the word melancholy the same again.
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