Language Agenda:  Editorial Malaise of TAUTOLOGY 

Question:
Dr. A. M. Marzuq Azindoo, what charge will you prefer against this Editor? Asks my brother-in-law, Politician Damba, in reference to a banner headline of a recent edition of CRUSADING GUIDE, a leading Ghanaian newspaper.

My Reply:
Dear brother-in-law, I appeal for clemency. Indeed, let there be NO charge! It is a matter of TEXTUAL VIRUS. So, we need the anti-virus of "delete" to cure the TAUTOLOGICAL MALAISE. This anti-virus will eliminate the word "back" and put the headline on a track of GRAMMATICAL NORMALCY. The revised sentence will then be:

● BAWUMIA RETURNS.
For artistic beauty of page planing and for emphasis, we may add the adverb of place "home" to the headline. This way, it will be:

● BAWUMIA RETURNS HOME.
Alternatively, the anti-virus can sweep away the verb "returns" and replace it with the verb "comes." If this option is considered, the corrected sentence will read as follows:

● BAWUMIA COMES BACK.
Another simple solution is to use the linking verb "is" as the main verb. This will link the subject "Bawumia" to the complement "back." In that case, the revised sentence will be:

● Bawumia IS back.
In another development, a leading newspaper in Ghana writes: "...until it finally comes to an end..." This statement may satisfy the communicative objective of the writer, but it is injured in a grammatical accident of TAUTOLOGY. Below is the justification of claim.

The adverb "finally" and the noun "end" are words of the same semantic properties (meanings). Contextually, both of them express the sense of completion at the same time in the same structure. The following questions may help us identify the TAUTOLOGY under review clearly:

● Which finality is not an end?
● Which end does not constitute finality?
Certainly, whatever is FINAL is an END. Therefore, one of the words would have been enough to express the desired message.

The faulty construction could be corrected in the following ways:

● ... until it ENDS...
● ... until it comes to an END...
● ... until it FINALIZES...
● ... until it is FINALIZED...
Dear reader, in speaking or writing beware of unnecessary intensifiers to avoid TAUTOLOGY of this kind.

Allah is the Best Grammarian.
By Dr. Abubakar Mohammed Marzuq Azindoo,
Lecturer, University of Applied Management, Germany - Ghana Campus, McCarthy Hill, Accra.

Email: [email protected]