verbosity-redundancy — Redundant Phrase Removal

Severity: INFO · Auto-fix: Yes · Category: 📝 Verbosity

What It Does

Detects multi-word phrases that can be replaced with a shorter equivalent without changing meaning. These accumulate across prompts and waste tokens.

Detected Phrases (40+)

All matches are case-insensitive:

Prepositions & Connectives

Verbose	Concise	Tokens saved
in order to	to	2
due to the fact that	because	4
for the purpose of	for	3
in the event that	if	3
with regard to	about / for	2
in relation to	about	2
for the reason that	because	3
with the exception of	except	3
in spite of the fact that	although	5
in close proximity to	near	3
prior to	before	1
subsequent to	after	1
until such time as	until	3

Time Expressions

Verbose	Concise
at this point in time	now
in the near future	soon
at the present time	now
on a daily basis	daily
on a weekly basis	weekly
on a monthly basis	monthly

Redundant Pairs (things that say the same thing twice)

Redundant phrase	Why
past history	History is always past
future plans	Plans are always future
end result	Results are ends
basic fundamentals	Fundamentals are basic
close proximity	Proximity implies closeness
new innovation	Innovations are new
personal opinion	Opinions are personal
true fact	Facts are true
repeat again	Repeat = do again
still remains	Remains = still is
advance planning	Planning is in advance
past experience	Experience is from the past
unexpected surprise	Surprises are unexpected
completely eliminate	Eliminate = completely remove
completely finished	Finished = completely done

Wordy Verb Phrases

Verbose	Concise
has the ability to	can
is able to	can
gather together	gather
join together	join
refer back	refer
return back	return
a total of	(just the number)
each and every	every
first and foremost	first

Example

Input:

In order to gather together the results, the function has the ability to
process each and every record. Due to the fact that this runs on a daily basis,
we need to completely eliminate past history from the cache prior to running.

Findings:

[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 1)  'in order to' → 'to'
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 1)  'gather together' → 'gather'
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 1)  'has the ability to' → 'can'
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 2)  'each and every' → 'every'
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 2)  'due to the fact that' → 'because'
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 2)  'on a daily basis' → 'daily'
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 3)  'completely eliminate' (redundant intensifier)
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 3)  'past history' (tautology)
[ INFO ] verbosity-redundancy (line 3)  'prior to' → 'before'

After --fix:

To gather the results, the function can process every record. Because this
runs daily, we need to eliminate history from the cache before running.

False Positives

prior to in formal/legal prompts — some regulated industries use prior to as a required legal term. Disable verbosity-redundancy or use prior to as a recognized domain term.

personal opinion in survey prompts — "What is your personal opinion?" is a legitimate phrasing in survey design where personal distinguishes it from professional recommendation. The rule will still flag it.

is able to in accessibility contexts — "The screen reader is able to interpret this" is technically correct but uses a pattern the rule flags. Rephrase to "The screen reader can interpret this."

Configuration

rules:
  verbosity_redundancy: true

fix:
  verbosity_redundancy: true   # auto-replace on --fix

Disable:

rules:
  verbosity_redundancy: false

Only one occurrence per pattern is reported per run

If prior to appears 5 times in a prompt, only the first occurrence is flagged. --fix replaces all occurrences.