The Hidden Danger of Over-Explaining: Why Too Much Clarity Can Actually Confuse Readers
Why does over-explaining often lead to grammatical clutter?
Over-explaining occurs when a writer provides information that the reader either already knows or can easily infer from the context. In grammatical terms, this often manifests as a pleonasm—the use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning.
For example, consider the phrase “he saw it with his own eyes.” Since “seeing” inherently involves eyes, the additional words provide no new data; they merely add bulk. This clutter forces the reader’s brain to process extra tokens of information, which can obscure the core subject-verb relationship of the sentence.
