“…TECHNOLOGY HAS AN EXTENSIVE PRESENCE IN TECHNOLOGY….”

“…TECHNOLOGY HAS AN EXTENSIVE PRESENCE IN TECHNOLOGY…” RAB, at the wonderful You Know What I Meant blog, has a report from the first writing assignment of the college year. The blog shows college students learning to write and think under the guidance of a gifted teacher. The post is dated November 5 and is devoted to the first sentence of one essay: “It is an indisputable fact that technology has an extensive presence in technology and continues to evolve.”

RAB generously suggests that this is a sentence that “got lost somewhere”, but I think it is a reflection of a flaw that appears in a lot of current professional writing—beginning an essay with a pretentious generalization.