A couple of items posted on Facebook by Pat Myers:

WAMU news: "An audible cheer broke out in the state legislature chambers."

On "All Things Considered," someone was described as having "a unique style all her own."

Fortunately they no longer do it, but there was a time when ATMs asked the user to 'please wait for a short time'. Well, I waited, often, but I'm damned if I ever got a short time, let alone a round the world.

People here often call ATM's; 'ATM machines' not realizing ATM stands for Automatic Teller Machine.

"ATM machine" is sort of like saying "the BBC corporation." But I think the last the worst. One might unthinkingly parrot the common mistake "ATM machine" at least from inattention; whereas "BBC corporation" is both redundant and newfangled. You might suffer to repeat the first redundancy from careless mimicry, but if you say the second you can only have introduced a new one of your own making.

The more I read of these redundancies, the more inclined I am to forgive them. Some add colour to a sentence, others merely enable rhythm. Like errant apostrophes, they will drive us mad if we don't forgive their existence.

It's too late, Adrian. I've already gone off my rocker due to errant apostrophes.

Jayne

I agree. In some of the redundancies mentioned, the repeat is merely an intensifier -- There is some additional horror in the statement "He drowned in his own blood".

But perhaps even more horror in the statement "He drowned in his children's blood." I wish I hadn't thought of that.

They are both the same.

or, as some of my students would be inclined to put it: Both of the two of them are exactly the same.

(Now that I think of it, this illustrates why these redundancies are worth pointing out. There's nothing particularly egregious in the first one. It can, as some have said about other redundancies, be preferable in some contexts to the more succinct version, but it may show the writer hasn't stopped to consider the words, which can lead to writing like the second example.)

One thing that no one in the thread has closely examined [wait, is that a redundancy? aren't all examinations close?] is what precisely is the problem with redundancy? Are we just trying to work within the 140-character limit of Twitter? How exactly does a redundancy affect our ability to communicate? Rather than starting with the premise that redundancy is a bad thing, shouldn't we ask why? And if we do, I believe that we will find that the reasons don't apply to each and every [wait, is that redundant? why not just say "each" or just say "every"?] instance of redundancy.