If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

The line is a deliberately self-demonstrating reminder about revision: it repeats “re-read(ing)” and circles back on itself to enact the very redundancy it warns against. Attributed to William Safire—who built a public reputation as a language columnist and usage commentator—it encapsulates a core editorial principle: distance and rereading reveal unnecessary repetition, wordiness, and structural slack that are invisible in the heat of drafting. The humor lies in the sentence’s clumsy recursion, which makes the advice memorable while underscoring that good writing is often less about inspiration than about disciplined cutting and tightening.