Common English Blunders

“RADAR ENFORCED”

Common English Blunders

I often see this at the bottom of speed-limit signs.

Problem:
Neither meaning of the phrase makes sense.

Explanation:
“RADAR ENFORCED” could mean either “(THE PRESENCE OF) RADAR IS ENFORCED” or “RADAR-ENFORCED” (note the hyphen).

The former makes no sense, given that drivers don’t have to have radar.

The latter makes no sense, either, given that enforcing a speed limit with radar would mean that a police officer could slow a vehicle to the speed limit by beaming radar toward it. If that were possible, it probably would kill the driver in the process.

What the sign posters want to say is that the law-enforcement authorities are monitoring vehicles’ speeds with radar (detectors).

Solution:
“MONITORED WITH RADAR”

“PIN Number”

Common English Blunders, Redundancies

I often see and hear this.

Problem:
This phrase is redundant.

Explanation:
The acronym “PIN” means Personal Identification Number, so “PIN Number” means Personal Identification Number Number.

Out of curiosity, I searched with the quotation marks for “PIN number” at Google and got about 2,030,000 matches. Yikes! This is a fairly common problem (at least on the Web).

It seems to me that people who say or write “PIN Number” (or “PIN number”)

  • have lost track of the meaning of the individual letters in “PIN”,
  • never knew the meaning of the individual letters, or
  • are comforted by saying a noun after saying an acronym.

I wonder about the intersection of the population of those who say or write “PIN Number” with the population of those who say or write “ATM Machine” (about which I wrote yesterday). The people in that intersection would be comfortable with sentences such as “I forgot my PIN number at the ATM machine.” — double yikes!

Solutions:
“PIN” or “Personal Identification Number”

“ATM Machine”

Common English Blunders, Redundancies

I often see and hear this.

Problem:
This phrase is redundant.

Explanation:
The initialism “ATM” means Automated Teller Machine, so “ATM Machine” means Automated Teller Machine Machine.

Out of curiosity, I searched with the quotation marks for “ATM machine” at Google and got about 1,460,000 matches. Yikes! This is a fairly common problem (at least on the Web).

It seems to me that people who say or write “ATM Machine” (or “ATM machine”)

  • have lost track of the meaning of the individual letters in “ATM”,
  • never knew the meaning of the individual letters, or
  • are comforted by saying a noun after saying an initialism.

Solutions:
“ATM” or “Automated Teller Machine”