Q. Dear Sir or Madam: At paragraph 2.75 you say, “To point out repetition.” And at paragraph 2.76 you talk about “inadvertent repetition.” I want to know what the repetition is like. In Japan, we don’t usually talk about repetition as a problem of publishing.
A. In English, repetition is sometimes useful for emphasis, but it can become a problem when a sentence or passage is repeated accidentally, when a point or argument is made more often than necessary, or when a word or phrase is used so often that it becomes distracting or tiresome. In these cases, we advise editing.