Plan ahead if you are going to preplan

“A funeral home’s radio commercial advises us to save our families some trouble by ‘preplanning ahead,’” said John Willow as Buck checked his sparkplugs at Curly’s Soonerco. “This is good advice, but is the grammar good?”

That depends on whether you consider redundancy to be good grammar, John. Redundancy is unnecessary duplication. It’s a good thing when it comes to safety devices. But it won’t earn you a gold star in Miss Prunella Pincenez’s eighth-grade English class.

When Yogi Berra said, “It’s deja-vu all over again,” he was being redundant, even as he uttered a sentence that would achieve immortality in the lore of baseball linguistics.

“Deja-vu” means, literally, already seen. So if you’re experiencing deja- vu, you’re already seeing something all over again — or at least you think you are. You can get away with it if you’re a colorful major-league catcher on your way to the Hall of Fame.

But if you’re just an Oklahoma undertaker trying to advertise your services, it can earn you some raised eyebrows among educated folks.

“Preplanning ahead” is redundant. If you preplan you are, by definition, planning ahead. If you advise families to “preplan,” you’re advising them to plan ahead. If you urge them to plan ahead, you’re urging them to preplan. One admonition should be enough.

“When Methuselah, Harvey Pumpernickle’s senile old mule, died of old age, Harvey buried him in a pre-dug hole,” said Gopher.

“If Methuselah was senile, he was old by definition,” said Buck. “If he died of old age, that also tells you he was old. And all holes are pre-dug. You can’t bury him, then dig the hole. Not without being redundant, anyway.”