I stumbled onto this article this morning. It's aimed at business writers, but I fear it applies to some of us as well. In fact, I should have included it on the list of things I look for while doing rewrites, but I forgot: http://howtowritebetter.net/tautology-are-you-guilty-of-wasting-words/
I'll double-check these numbers...you mean you've already checked them once? I suppose I should be reassured, but if you didn't find the mistake you made on your first draft during your first edit, why would you find it on your second?
"My (very own) personal opinion," is one that gets me every time. And perhaps Ms St. Maur would like to revisit her final sentence: "Here are some of of them, along with some of of[sic] my own favourites."
Sounds like you either doubt my process or think I'm an idiot... or is this a case of using second person as a substitute for 'people in general?'
I agree that it's important to avoid unnecessary tautology, but I sometimes think we get too caught up in trying to "tighten" and end up sacrificing rhythm and style. I read some of the re-writes people offer in various critique threads and cringe - they've sacrificed a lot of nice language in order to make a sentence slightly shorter. If words are truly useless, they should go. But "use" shouldn't only be defined in terms of adding new information.
Yes, as my father-in-law would say, "There's a difference between picking your nose and ripping it off your face."