Most of us hate the icky feeling of seeing or hearing the same word over and over again in the same statement, as in this case: “This cellular phone comes in three colors. The first of the colors is gray, the second of the colors is beige, and the third of the colors is blue.” Some writers or speakers who come up with such constructions wrongly assume that by repeating the phrase “of the colors” three times in a row to reinforce the phrase “in three colors” in the first sentence, they are making themselves crystal clear. On the contrary, they just make themselves boringly repetitive.

A good way to avoid this construction bind is to use the reference word strategy. This is the active effort of preventing the needless recurrence of certain words or phrases in our prose by methodically using more concise words or phrases in their place. These replacements, called reference words, are not the kind we usually hunt for in dictionaries or thesauruses. Reference words are those that we can figure out logically from the relationships of the phrases in the sentence itself, or those that we can readily deduce from their contexts.

One of these reference word strategies is the noun omission technique, where we avoid the recurrent use of a noun by using the following words in its place: (1) “one,” “another,” and “the other” for three singular count nouns in consecutive order; and (2) the nouns “some,” “others,” and “the others” (or “the rest”) in place of the plural count adjectives “some,” “other,” and “the other” that we normally use right before plural count nouns to modify them. After the noun omission process, however, we must keep in mind that these words become pronouns and cease to work as adjectives.

Of course, the technique of using “one,” “another,” and “the other” in place of three singular count nouns in consecutive order should already be second nature to us. Thus, we know that the repetitive statement at the beginning of this column can take this more concise, more forceful form: “This cellular phone comes in three colors. One is gray, another is beige, and the other is blue.” We should also be very familiar with the technique of organizing our sentences when only two singular count nouns in consecutive order are involved. All we have to do is use “one” and “the other” in tandem: “This cellular phone comes in two colors. One is gray; the other is blue.”

While we are at it, we might as well answer this question: What happens if there are more than three singular count nouns in consecutive order—say, if there are four or six of them? As most of us already know, we simply use the already familiar numerical order technique: “This cellular phone comes in four colors. The first is gray, the second is beige, the third is blue, and the fourth [or last] is green.” Or we can use a serial numbering sequence: “This cellular phone comes in six colors. Color number 1 is gray, 2 is beige, 3 is blue, 4 is green, 5 is pink, and 6 is maroon.” It’s really all that simple.

Things are only a little bit different when we deal with three or more plural count nouns in consecutive order. For instance, if we didn’t use noun omission as a reference word strategy, we might come up with a longwinded sentence like this: “Some of the presidential aspirants are credible, other presidential aspirants are obviously unqualified, and other presidential aspirants are simply nuisance candidates.” Using the noun omission technique, we can boil down the sentence to this more concise and more elegant form: “Some of the presidential aspirants are credible, others are obviously unqualified, and the rest are simply nuisance candidates.”

We can also use elliptical construction to make the sentence even more concise, this time by eliminating the repetitive verb “are” after the first noun clause: “Some of the presidential aspirants are credible, others obviously unqualified, and the rest simply nuisance candidates.” In a sense, noun omission as reference word strategy is another form of elliptical sentence construction, which, we will remember, is the grammar technique of eliminating certain obvious elements in a sentence in a way that doesn’t distort its meaning.

Some caveats when using noun omission for three or more plural count nouns in consecutive order: (1) Never use the word “another” instead of “other” before a plural count noun; thus, this sentence is grammatically wrong: “Some of the presidential aspirants are credible, another presidential aspirants are obviously unqualified.” (The correct way: “Some of the presidential aspirants are credible; other presidential aspirants are obviously unqualified.”); (2) The phrases “the rest” and “the rest of the” are inviolate; they cannot be shortened to “rest” or “rest of them”; thus, this sentence is unacceptable: “Some of the presidential aspirants are credible, others are obviously unqualified, and rest are simply nuisance candidates.” (The correct way: “Some of the presidential aspirants are credible, other presidential aspirants are obviously unqualified, and the rest are simply nuisance candidates.”).

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 12, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 54 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

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The French novelist Gustave Flaubert believed that only one word could give justice to a particular thing—“le mot juste”—and he obsessively searched for it before committing himself on paper. He may well have been right. After all, short of deliberately destroying the thing itself, there really isn’t much we can do to change its fundamental nature. Thus, in the English language, an “apple” will remain an “apple” till it’s eaten and digested, and “Eve” will remain “Eve” even after she has eaten that apple and is cast away from Paradise. Fortunately for us, however, there’s really no semantic law forbidding us to call an “apple” or “Eve” by some other word the next time it figures in our thoughts or on our tongues.

How dreary language, communication, and literature would be, in fact, if Flaubert’s prescription for words—like what is generally believed as the preferred French prescription for kissing—were to be followed to the letter! Then we would have to contend every time with the tedium of going through passages like this:

The apple is the popular edible fruit of the apple tree. The apple has the scientific name Malus sylvestris and belongs to the family Rosaceae. The apple is widely cultivated in temperate climates. The apple has more than 7,000 varieties but only 40 are commercially important, and the most popular apple variety in the U.S. is called Delicious. Apples are of three main types: cooking apples, dessert apples, and apples for making cider.

Using synonyms or similar words in place of a particular key word is actually one of the most powerful devices for giving zest and substance to language. Along with the other reference word techniques that we have already learned, they help ensure that our listeners or readers won’t tune us out because of boredom. Synonyms, while not exactly le mot juste, allow us to clarify meaning by focusing on the word’s specific attributes, thus throwing new light on the same idea. They make laborious, complicated explanations unnecessary; as in painting, well-chosen single words or short phrases are quick brush strokes that illumine ideas or clarify meaning and intent. As Peter Mark Roget, author of Roget’s Thesaurus, remarked in his introduction to the revolutionary book in 1852: “Some felicitous expression thus introduced will frequently open the mind of the reader to a whole vista of collateral ideas.”

Indeed, see what happens to the dreary apple passage above when we take Roget’s prescription to heart:

The apple, the mythical fruit often associated with the beginnings of the world and mankind, is the popular fruit of the tree of the same name. The fleshy, edible pome—usually of red, yellow, or green color—has the scientific name Malus sylvestris and belongs to the family Rosaceae. As a cousin of the garden rose, it has the same usually prickly shrub with feather-shaped leaves and five-petaled flowers. It is widely cultivated as a fruit crop in temperate climates. More than 7,000 varieties of the species are known but only 40 are commercially important, and its most popular variety in the U.S. is called Delicious. The fruit is of three main types: the cooking apple, the dessert apple, and the type for making cider.

This revised passage uses a total of eight apple synonyms and similar words: “popular fruit,” “tree of the same name,” “pome,” “a cousin of the garden rose,” “a fruit crop,” “species,” “variety,” and “the type”—each one capturing a new shade of meaning, aspect, connotation, or denotation of the apple and throwing the idea of the word “apple” in bolder relief.

We must beware, however, that synonyms can only establish contexts, not definitions; they may help illuminate discourse but not offer an analysis of things. For instance, in the revised apple passage, the synonyms used will be useful only to the extent that each of them is already understood by the listeners or readers. All of the apple-related words used—except “pome”—work very well as synonyms in the passage because they are of common knowledge; depending on the target audience, however, “pome” may need some clarifying amplification. (A pome, for those confounded by the word, is “a fleshy fruit with an outer thickened fleshy layer and a central core with usually five seeds enclosed in a capsule.”) The speaker or writer must ultimately decide if such amplification is needed.

When using synonyms, we also must make sure that their antecedent words—whether nouns, pronouns, or verbs—are clear all throughout. There is always the danger of overdoing the word replacements, particularly when the conceptual link between the original sword and the synonym is not strong enough. In that case, repeating the original word or using the obvious pronoun for it—“he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” or “them”—may be more advisable. Go over the revised apple passage again and see how the pronoun “it” for apple was used twice to provide such a link and continuity.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 12, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

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