How I Tend to Abuse English

 
I'm about 2/3′s of the way through line editing Gunwitch now. I'm learning, via Serenity's Editor, that my grasp of English isn't as complete as I thought it was.
 
Here's the list of my most common issues:

"stand up"/'stood up" – "up" is usually redundant
"sit down"/"sat down" – "down" is usually redundant
"… and then…" – can usually get rid of "and"
"…but then…" – can usually get rid of "but"
"onto" – that's not really a word these days
"…so that…" – can usually delete "that"
"…once again…" – can usually delete "once"

 
In fact, I can do a simple Find/Replace on those items and be 75% of the way finished line editing a chapter.
 
In dialog I'm not so fussy, but in narrative prose, I like to be as correct as possible–while still hearing my own "voice" in the words.
 
Just going through this exercise, I expect to commit fewer of these transgressions in the future. Even my normal, spoken English is getting tighter than it was.
 
The trick, I think, is to improve without becoming a pain in the ass about these sort of copy issues when I see them in other people's prose.
 
-David
 
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