Context Matters

[Dale]

Not all editing is about structure, flow, continuity, sentence structures, and typos. Sometimes it's about context. The following made me laugh, in a cringing sort of way. Or is it cringe in a laughing sort of way? You decide:

"Autonomous vehicles are currently subject to a lot of hope, hype and hysteria, especially after the recent fatality in Arizona, when a pedestrian was struck and killed by one of Uber’s self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles will likely have as significant an impact on our lives as electricity, computers and the internet all did. However, just like the aforementioned innovations, we cannot predict all the varied impacts and implications, both positive and negative, of self-driving vehicles."

[From the Medium article What Do We Know About Autonomous Vehicles? by Carl Anderson.]

Technically there's nothing wrong with this passage, but as I read it, I about choked when I realized that mention of a pedestrian being struck and killed by a self-driving car was followed by not one but two instances of the word "impact." I think I'd change the first one to "effect" and cut the second one.

By the by, I've made my wife spout her drink from her nose a time or three with my own failures to consider context when choosing a word, so I'm not criticizing, just pointing it out.

[Amy]

Yep. I’d also pick up the same word twice and change one of them. It’s detail. It’s not always a deal-breaker leading to a DNF but it could be polished. If I find those in my writing I pull a face. Hopefully they don’t happen often.