A bad argument looking to make good.

Maybe the perversity we all feel in the idea of striving at marriage — the reason so few of us do it — stems from a misapprehension of the proper goal. In the early years, we take our marriages to be vehicles for wish fulfillment: we get the mate, maybe even a house, an end to loneliness, some kids. But to keep expecting our marriages to fulfill our desires — to bring us the unending happiness or passion or intimacy or stability we crave — and to measure our unions by their capacity to satisfy those longings, is naïve, even demeaning.

Recently, a columnist for The New York Observer spotted a redundancy in the sports pages of The New York Times: “The Czechs played the way they can; the Americans reverted halfway back toward 1990 when they were drubbed, 5-1.” The columnist snarled and pounced:

We all know that the verb “reverted” contains the direction “back” in it. To add “back” is thoroughly redundant… . To return is to turn back. Adding the word “back” may appear to solidify your meaning but it only exposes your ignorance.

To which an even more observant reader replied:

Now, we all know that the verb “contains” already contains the meaning “in it.” To add “in it,” as Phil does, is thoroughly redundant. Adding the phrase “in it” may appear to solidify your meaning but it only exposes your ignorance.

Hence no force, however great,
can stretch a cord, however fine,
into a horizontal line
which is accurately straight.