I heard this a couple of days ago while watching a History Channel program on the Ark of the Covenant.

Problem:
The verb “pre-planned” is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
The “pre” in “pre-planned” is redundant, just as the “back” in “return back” is redundant.

To plan something is to do think about something before it occurs.

The “pre” prefix also means before.

It makes no sense to think about something before before.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “planned” — 155,000,000 matches
• “pre-planned” — 1,400,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have avoided this “pre-” redundancy by a ratio of almost 111:1, which is good but not great, especially in light of over one million(!) “pre-planned” matches.

Solution:
“It wasn’t something I planned.”

I heard this today on television.

Problem:
This is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
The “pre” in “pre-planning” is redundant, just as the “back” in “reply back” is redundant.

To plan something is to do think about something before it occurs.

The “pre” prefix also means before.

It makes no sense to think about something before before.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “planning” — 51,700,000 matches
• “pre-planning” — 890,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have avoided this “pre-” redundancy by a ratio of 58.1:1, which is okay but not very good, especially in light of nearly one million(!) “pre-planning” matches.

Solution:
“Planning”

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”