Tips for writers and editors

Repetition is one of the easiest mistakes to make and one of the hardest to see in your own work. Here's how to catch it.

Why repetition creeps in

• Moving text. You copy a paragraph to a better place and forget to delete it from the old one. This is the most common cause, especially under deadline.
• Merging drafts. Combining versions, or pieces written by different people, leaves the same point made twice in slightly different words.
• Notes and outlines. Sentences drafted in notes get pasted into the text in two places.
• Introductions and conclusions. A summary that repeats the introduction word for word reads as padding.
• Long projects. In a book written over months or years, you may make the same point, tell the same anecdote, or use the same description in chapters written far apart.
• Pet phrases. Every writer has favorite constructions that turn up more often than they realize.

Readers notice all of these. Spell checkers and grammar checkers don't, because each copy is perfectly correct on its own.

A routine that works

1. Check after every big reorganization, not just at the end. Moving text is when duplicates are born.
2. Check before you submit, as the last step after the final edit.
3. Fix, then check again. Dismissed repeats stay dismissed, so each new check shows only what's left.
4. For a book, check the whole manuscript as a set of chapters, in order, with Check the documents together as one work ticked.

Settings for different jobs

Short settings find more, including ordinary phrases like "at the end of the day", which may be exactly what you're looking for, or just noise.

Intentional repetition

Not every repeat is a mistake. Refrains, deliberate callbacks, repeated section headings, legal definitions, standard disclaimers, and a quotation you discuss twice are all fine. Click Dismiss in the report, and WRepeatfind remembers it for that document, as long as the passage's words stay the same.

Fixing a repeat

• A leftover from moving text: delete the copy in the weaker location.
• The same point made twice: keep the stronger version, and let the other place refer to it or say something new.
• A summary that repeats the introduction: rewrite it to add what the reader has learned since.
• A favorite phrase: vary it, or cut it where it isn't doing work.

For journalists and editors

Web editors and content systems make it easy to drag blocks around, and hard to see the whole story at once. Paste the story into WRepeatfind with Paste Text, check it, and fix the repeats before it goes live. It takes seconds, and your text never leaves your computer: nothing is sent to any online service before publication.

For students and researchers

A thesis or dissertation assembled from papers, proposals, and chapters written over years often repeats itself. Check the full document, or each chapter in order as one work. WRepeatfind looks only for repetition within your own writing. To compare your work with sources, use WCopyfind.