Elements of Style Workshop
--Curing Your Cliché Woes--
(And not sounding like an average, run of the mill, Joe Blow)
What is a cliché, and why is it bad? Clichés are the mummified remnants of a colorful phrase
turned meaningless by excessive use. At one point, a cliché was interesting, sparkling and original—
perhaps a carefully worded phrase (when the going gets tough, the tough….), but as time progressed,
overuse has rendered such phrases meaningless, musac for the masses. In fact, clichés are so often
used that they merely annoy the experienced reader due to their predictability, triteness, unoriginality.
As Billy Ocean says, clichés "are generally fixed idiomatic phrases, some of which may have originally
been valid, fresh, and colorful but through constant use have become about as personal as a rubber
stamp or a mimeographed love letter." In essence, the more clichés you use, the more cliché you
become.
For instance, the phrases little did I know, as luck would have it, bite the dust, breath of fresh
air, smooth as silk, a crying shame, after all is said and done, at the crack of dawn, then it hit me,
bored to tears, drop a bombshell, flat as a pancake, and in this day and age were once effective and
striking phrases. No longer. No mas. To illustrate how dull and predictable clichés are, see how easy it
is to fill in the missing words in the examples below.
Scared out of my _____
All is fair in love and _________
All’s well that ends _________
Every cloud has a ______ _____
Haste makes ______
The writing on ____ ____
What goes around ____ ______
Packed in as tight as _________
That captain runs a tight ______
Believe it or ____
Breathe a sigh of ______
Better late ____ _____
Like a bolt from the ______
That was the ____ that broke the
______ 's ____
As alike as two ______ in a
______
Beyond the shadow of a
__________
Leave no stone __________
Don't have a _______, ______!
Rear its ugly _____
Sadder but _____
Taylor Swift is annoying.
The bottom _____
Last but not ______
Few and far _______
Crystal _____
Take the bull by _____ _____
You get the ______
Unfortunately, many young writers are fond of clichés. They find comfort in the old and the familiar.
It is too easy to sit back and let the trite phrase spill forth thoughtlessly from your pen. Don't give into
that urge! Clichés have a funny way of forcing writers' thinking into old ways of thinking, rather than
allowing them to refigure thoughts in a new way. Your job is to make language new. Clichés are
insidious, and they creep up on you when you least expect them. Avoid them like the plague.
What to do?
Choice A: Give in and let the clichés run from your mouth like a leaking ______. This, of
course, is the path of least _________. In fact, this path is as easy as _______. There is a
certain liberty in being yet another _____ in the machine. Sit back and _____. Kick up your
____. Live your life as decided by others. After all, it’s a free _______.
Choice B: Don’t be complacent and sloth-like. Go through your writing and locate all the
phrases (similes, puns, dead metaphors) that you have or may have heard before and circle
them. You may even want your friends (or even your parents) to read your essay for you and do
the same—I assure you, others will pick up on some cliches that you may have not noticed.
Then, follow the three strategies on the back of this page.
Turn Over
3 Strategies
1. First, you can simplify the phrase. It's not colorful, but it is better than using a cliché and
labeling yourself as an unoriginal writer who can't think of a better way to phrase a simple
idea.
"A bolt from the blue" would then become "a shock"
"beyond the shadow of a doubt" would then become "undoubtedly"
"Swept under the rug" would then become "concealed"
"As pure as the fresh driven snow" would then become "immaculate"
2. A bit more advanced technique is to take the trite phrase and give it a slight twist, a minor
tweak that radically changes the meaning of the phrase. Doing so breathes new life into dead
language by making it de-familiarized; the reader encounters the words anew for the first time
and becomes pleasantly surprised. For instance, G. K. Chesterton wrote, "If a thing is worth
doing, it is worth doing badly." Talulah Bankhead wrote, "I am as pure as the fresh driven
slush." Another writer, Tom Bethel, avoided a Shakespearean cliché by writing, "Washington is
Thunder City--full of sound and fury signifying power." Sometimes, the new phrase made by
refashioning a cliché may make a good title. One James Bond film, far too action-packed to live
and let live, decided to Live and Let Die.
Such verbal slight-of-hand is available to any student who takes the time. One student, writing
about bombing technology, concluded, "That's the whole thing in a bombshell," cleverly
twisting the cliché about nutshell. Another student who was writing about animal research
realized that the phrase "on the other hand" was becoming repetitive in his paper. He stirred
up the language pot and wrote "on the other paw" in reference to an animal. It was a bit too
cute for some tastes, but all the other readers in class who encountered his twist on the cliché
loved it.
3. Finally, the best (and hardest) way to cure a cliché is to make up an entirely new image or
phrase, one you have never heard before but which expresses the same idea. Either think of an
image that startles the reader by its unexpectedness or one that connotes appropriate
emotional resonances in the reader.
Simple: “You can’t run away from your past” or your “past will catch up to you” becomes
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real” –All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Complex: “When the going gets tough the tough get going” becomes “The man who believes
that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag
him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of
singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge
of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of
his own fate.” –Blood meridian by Cormac McCarthy