Redundancy family
SAT glossary · Course Foundations
Definition
Options where one half of a phrase is already contained in the other — annual…each year; returned…back; the reason…is because; brief…in duration. When options differ only in length and all are grammatical, the shortest is almost always correct, reflecting a real editorial standard rather than a guessing heuristic — but confirm the short one has not dropped a necessary word.
Redundancy family in plain English
This covers a family of sentences where one half of a phrase is already saying the exact same thing as the other half, making part of it completely redundant — like 'annual...each year' (annual already means 'each year'), 'returned...back' ('return' already implies going back), 'the reason...is because' ('because' already means 'for the reason that'), or 'brief...in duration' ('brief' already means short in duration). When several answer choices differ mainly in LENGTH, and all of them are grammatically correct, the SHORTEST one is very often the right answer, reflecting a genuine writing standard (cut unnecessary words) rather than just being a lucky guessing trick — though you should still double-check that the short option didn't accidentally cut out a word you actually need.
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