Talk:Tautology (language)

tautological dialog
As an unproduced screenwriter, I've run into the problem of tautological dialog. It's all-too-easy to pen dialog in which someone says the same thing twice, to no point. It weakens the dialog, for the same reason "too many words" makes anything harder to follow. (Terseness is desirable in screenplays.) It can be corrected with aggressive editing. (It's a great pleasure to see four lines turn into two lines that say exactly the same thing.)

"Tautological dialog" does not appear in a Google search, and I know of no one who's written about it. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 17:50, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

The first sentence is a tautology!
I don't know if this is an intentional joke, but isn't "an unnecessary repetition of meaning unnecessarily" a tautology! twopir (talk) 18:10, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

First example not a tautology
In my opinion "close proximity" is not a tautology, given the definition of proximity is "nearness in space, time, or relationship" and is not indicative of how near something is. It is broadly equivalent to 'distance to' in spatial terms, or 'nearness to' more generally. If "not in close proximity" is a valid construction and not a tautology, the same should apply to "is in close proximity". For instance, the construction "the sun is not in proximity to the earth" is meaningless, and is tantamount to saying "the sun is not any distance or lack of distance [nearness] from the earth", however to say "the sun is not in close proximity to the earth" is a valid construction (although to be pedantic one would need to state it is not close with respect to what frame of reference and object.

I will concede in common usage of 'proximity' it could be considered tautological, and in certain constructions I think it would be tautological, it is not universally so and there are less disputable examples. From the top of my head: "A fatal murder", "wet water", "a piercing impalement", and so on. Just 2c from a frequent reader and extremely rare editor. 86.130.137.91 (talk) 01:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Former alumni
This is not a tautology in every case. For instance if you lost your academical title for example because of fraud you are an ex alumni.