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I'm an online writer/editor and lately I've been running into some of what I consider unnecessary wordiness. Specifically, the insertion of to after help. For example, "certain equipment can help to ease these concerns." Couldn't writer just have said "certain equipment can help ease these concerns"? Is there some reasonable explanation why people insert to? It may seem nit-picky, but I'm running across it a lot, and I'm starting to find it quite annoying.
You are like one of my university teachers in that once he picked on me because of writing 'or else' He said something like "You'd better write 'or'" Now I didn't agree with him because I knew that it was something already used by the language speakers. After that one of the classmates said that 'or else' is more tasty. And I think that's because of this reason that such "wordy" constructions still exist. Or it may be only a matter of habit. If you make the users conscious of that, they may leave it.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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