Let’s take a break from the keyword lessons and look at a few commonly mispronounced words and redundancies (ri-DUHN-dinseez), repetitive phrases.
If your business has anything to do with real estate, or if you ever do business with a real-estate broker, there is one word you should be careful to pronounce correctly: Realtor (which usually has a capital R because it is a trademark).
How do you pronounce this word?
The correct pronunciation is REE-ul-tur. The mispronunciation, which is very common even among Realtors themselves, is REEluh-tur. Most dictionaries do not recognize the pronunciation REEluh-tur; the few that do label it “nonstandard” or “unacceptable to many.” If you now mispronounce this word, it’s not hard to correct the error once you train your ear to discriminate between the right and wrong pronunciations. REE-luh-tur puts the sound of the l before the a, as though the word were spelled r-e-l-a-t-o-r. The proper pronunciation sounds like the word real plus the tur- in turnip.
You should also take care to pronounce the word realty correctly. Don’t stick the l sound where it doesn’t belong and say REE-luh-tee. The word should be pronounced like real plus tea. For practice, try repeating this sentence: “A Realtor sells realty.”
Now let’s expose some of the many redundancies that clutter our writing and speech.
When referring to the size, height, length, or width of something, it is not necessary to use these words. Don’t say big in size, small in size, large in size, or little in size. Don’t say tall in height or short in height, short or long in length, or wide or skinny in width. Those are all redundancies. Just say something is big, small, large, little, tall, short, long, wide, or slender, and leave it at that.
Getting rid of redundancy—or verbiage (pronounce it with three syllables, VUR-bee-ij)—in your speech and writing is like going on a diet. It takes some work to stick to it, but when you shed those unwanted pounds, or unnecessary words, you feel better and look better.
