wotiwrote

This is a minor pet hate, I guess. More of a hamster than a Great Dane (although it's hard to imagine anyone trying to keep Kierkegaard as a pet, boom boom). Anyway, it is something that occurs primarily in writing that stems from the US and can be categorised (categorized) as the fallacy of the redundant 'of'.

I have in front of me a paper by Doug Davis of IBM. The subject is not important - web services and firewalls, if you insist - but here's a line from the synopsis:

The notion of any SOAP message being routed dynamically based on information inside of the the WS-Addressing Headers introduces a new level of freedom to SOAP users.

The truth or otherwise of this assertion is irrelevant. What is not irrelevant, however, and what catches the eye on first reading - and which, therefore, detracts from the clarity of the sentence - is that 'inside of'. What does the 'of' add? If I say something is inside something else where else could it be? What does 'inside of' something mean? Aagh.

Unwilling as I am to make any negative comments about Neal Stephenson and the novels in his wunnerful Baroque Cycle, he, too, has a leaning towards the redundant 'of'. In his case it tends to be when things fall 'off of' something. Again, if I fall off something, can I fall any more if I do it with an extra 'of'? In many parts of the novels Stephenson's anachronisms actually add to the enjoyment. These superfluous prepositions, howver, throb on the page like unlanced boils.