How to avoid clichés in your message

Turn hackneyed phrases into fresh, exciting metaphors

Academics call clichés dead language.

Writers should avoid clichés in writing as they do with other types of lazy writing. To avoid lifeless language, cut common clichés in your own writing. Here are three ways to replace tired clichés in your writing with fresh metaphors:

1. Search and destroy clichés.

Use these six steps to identify clichés that need to be replaced:

1. Review your piece of writing.
2. Test your metaphors for overuse. Plug the term into Google, and see how many links you get. “When I plugged in ‘grim task,’ I found 55,400 links,” writes Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute senior scholar. “But the most common use came from journalists reporting on crime, accidents and natural disasters.” If you get too many hits, your phrase is overused. It’s a cliché, not a metaphor.
3. Test your metaphors for vividness. A working metaphor paints a picture in your mind. No picture, no metaphor. You’re probably looking at a cliché.
4. Test your metaphors for timeliness. It’s Ann Wylie’s rule of metaphors: “If we don’t do it literally any more, we can’t do it literarily any more.”
5. Circle every cliché. Each one is a sign that your message needs a metaphor.
6. Substitute fresh metaphors for tired clichés. Write new analogies that your contemporary audience can actually relate to.

2. Conduct a cliché watch.

Want to make sure your website isn’t packed with clichés? Try this approach:

• Make a list of clichés you want to avoid. Make this list part of your site’s or organization’s style guide.
• Search your site to see how often you use them. 
• Replace those clichés with fresh metaphors.

You may be surprised at how much your messages rely on dreary, overused phrases. Once you find them, avoid clichés by substituting new metaphors for old idioms.

3. Avoid ‘first-level creativity.’

When writing a metaphor, don’t use the first comparison that comes to mind, counsels Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute senior scholar. He writes: 

“When tempted by a tired phrase, ‘white as snow,’ stop writing. Take what the practitioners of natural childbirth call a ‘cleansing breath.’ Then jot down the old phrase on a piece of paper. Start scribbling alternatives …

“I have described one cliché of vision as ‘first-level creativity.’ For example, it’s impossible to survive a week of American journalism without reading or hearing the phrase: ‘But the dream became a nightmare’ …

“Writers who reach the first level of creativity think they are being original or clever. In fact, they settle for the ordinary, the dramatic or humorous place any writer can reach with minimal effort.”

Take Clark’s advice.

If your “analogies” flow from your fingertips with no thought at all … perhaps it’s because you haven’t been thinking enough. And without thinking, you’re more likely to call up a cliché than a fresh metaphor.

Back away from the computer. Breathe. Do not push “send” until you’ve come up with a second — or better, third — comparison.

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Source: Roy Peter Clark, “Alas, poor writer,” PoynterOnline, Aug. 4, 2007

Roy Peter Clark, “Seek Original Images,” The Poynter Institute, June 2, 2004