More about Semiotics >>

 

redundancy

Redundancy combats noise by ensuring that there are multiple opportunities for the signal to get through to the recipient. Without a great amount of repetition, reiteration, and restatement, a noisy channel is quickly overloaded. Spoken language, for example, is extremely redundant, using more words and non-linguistic content (volume, tone, pitch, body-language etc.), than necessary to convey messages.

Too much redundancy, however, is self-defeating. Needless duplication diminishes our chance to make novel statements, and our initially avid audience may become bored and inattentive.

In relation to web authoring, redundancy is a useful strategy to be deployed selectively. For example, most usability experts suggest providing multiple forms of core navigation for users -- 'breadcrumbs' and navigation bars and text links. Deployment of multiple organisational schema increases the likelihood that an individual user will be able to find what they are looking for.