Comments on: “In and of Itself”

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:06:32 +0000

Samuel: “The weather was not, in and of itself, the cause of the traffic delays. The weather was not the cause of the traffic delays. Apparently the first sentence has more information than the second — but I do not see the difference between the two.”

In the second sentence, it’s ambiguous whether the weather was partly responsible (though not the ultimate cause) or entirely unrelated.

By: Jane

Jane — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 02:18:29 +0000

If John were more enterprising, he would have disembarked at the previous station.

By: ravi bedi

ravi bedi — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:07:23 +0000

Is this ok:

If John was more enterprising, he would have got of at the previous station itself.

By: Briana

Briana — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 03:30:46 +0000

I like Ben’s idea too.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:18:09 +0000

Ugh. Typos. I need to get rid of the extra “I” and “every” from the above. It’s been a long day. :-/

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:09:43 +0000

Hmmm. . . I maybe I should have written the following instead:

Yay! It’s great that I’m able to win Jane over. She’s hot.

Now, every the whole sentence is in the present tense.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:06:26 +0000

Yay! It’s great that I was able to win Jane over. She’s hot.

By: Jane

Jane — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:14:23 +0000

Sam and Ben, I can see that “in and of itself” is filler. Ben, I like your idea of “The weather itself was not the cause of traffic delays.”

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:17:15 +0000

PS: I think that you could whittle down the phrase to just one word– “itself”– and write the following:

The weather itself was not the cause of traffic delays.

This would probably satisfy Briana.

I, however, like it short and sweet. Anyway, that’s my two cents’ worth in all of this.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:51:18 +0000

I agree with Sam. Using the phrase”in and of itself” is just filler and adds nothing meaningful or significant to the sentence. In fact, this phrase makes the whole sentence redundant, wordy, and trite. I say jettison “in and of itself” to a black hole far, far away and don’t look back.