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I have the following title:

やり終えたことはチェックしておこう！

which I think is roughly saying there is a that in advance of finishing there is a checklist (can anybody help with the literal translation?).

My question is regarding やり as a prefix. I assume this is やる - to do. And 終える to finish or graduate. But to me やり seems superfluous.

What is the difference between these two?

やり終えたことはチェックしておこう！

終えたことはチェックしておこう！

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やる(≒する)　→　やり　+　～おえる

やり is not a prefix, rather おえる is one of a great many productive verb suffixes. Moreover, in this case using just 終える sounds a bit strange to me (not native though).

Your final examples are the same as asking what the difference is between "be sure to check off what you've finished" vs "finished doing".

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  • Where do you get "be sure to" from? Or is that just inferred?
    – VictorySaber
    Dec 18, 2014 at 16:02
  • The しておこう part: "let's do in advance / in preparation for"
    – Brandon
    Dec 18, 2014 at 16:11
  • I thought so. My understanding of that is slightly at fault.
    – VictorySaber
    Dec 18, 2014 at 16:22

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