Echoic writing, in my definition anyway, is an example of how the mind may go momentarily dead and accept a word it's being fed by something the writer just wrote containing the same word.
My most recent notice of this is in language accompanying a photograph in my National Geographic Engagement Calendar, "Beautiful Landscapes." Writing of the following wonderful photograph in Iceland by Gunter Grafenhain/Huber/SIME,
the writer said, "Decades ago, the government planned to supplant the falls with a hydroelectric power plant..." I usually ascribe such repetition to laziness or temporary distraction; sometimes a close-sounding but different word may echo into place.
Great writers can also lapse. Poet Alexander Pope observed that even Homer nods. For an earlier post on echoic writing go here.
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