Writing is closely related to sound and imagery. As readers encounter your words, sounds and images will pop into their minds. Writing conveys ideas, too. As a writer, you should work to control the sounds, images, and ideas your words bring to mind.

Controlling the sounds readers will hear often involves using words that have similar sounds:

Few analysts of agricultural policy consider the current subsidy programs ideal. Different analyses, however, lend support to very different proposals about who, ideally, should receive subsidies.

The word forms themselves help tie the ideas of analyses to analysts, subsidies to subsidy programs, different proposals to different analyses, and ideally to ideal.

People who are famished aren’t in the best frame of mind to seek out healthy food. Hungry individuals who have fruits and vegetables in front of them, though, will usually eat them with delight.

Here, is the writer trying to make some distinction between people who are famished and individuals who are merely hungry? What relationship does she perceive between healthy food and fruits and vegetables? It’s not clear.

People who are hungry aren’t in the best frame of mind to seek out healthy food. Hungry people who have healthy food in front of them, though, will usually eat it with delight.

People, hungry, and healthy food now appear in both the first sentence and the second sentence, helping to establish clearly that the writer is presenting a difference between seeking out healthy food and eating it because it’s available.

Using words with similar sounds is a valuable writing technique. Repetitions of sounds can even be required in some situations — for instance, in parallel constructions like playing cards and watching movies. But repetition must be used with care. It can work for you — or against you. Avoid unintentional repeats or echoes, particularly when the similar-sounding words are close together:

Our nursing home has a residents’ committee that’s committed to making life better for everyone.

The staff finds that the committee’s suggestions often affect our effectiveness in a good way.

Ideas, like sounds, can repeat in undesirable ways:

This blunder is called redundancy. So many turns of phrase can be redundant that it would be impossible to list them all. Some notorious redundancies, however, are these:

added bonus

advance notice, advance planning, advance reservation, advance warning

armed gunman

both alike, both the same, both . . . different

consensus of opinion

end product, end result

final outcome

free gift

future plans

general public

HIV virus

mutual cooperation

overexaggerate

past history

PIN number

reason is because, reason why

return back, revert back

successful achievement

total annihilation, total extinction, total destruction

true fact

unconfirmed rumor

As for the images in readers’ heads, beware of mixed metaphors — conflicting figures of speech that call to mind confused jumbles of images:

Similarly, avoid using words that have more than one meaning in a context that’s likely to bring the wrong image to mind:

Prisoners are not permitted to use cell phones.