To Use or Not to Use? Debating Clichés in Your Writing
At the end of the day, we probably shouldn’t make a mountain out of a molehill about clichés; it’s better, after all, to get your ducks in a row than to be a Monday morning quarterback.
That sentence is an example of how to use clichés in force, and don’t think for a second that I didn’t have fun writing it (even if it’s meaningless!). Clichés, by definition, are overused words or phrases. But some clichés go beyond being merely overused, especially in the business context. Think of how often you hear colleagues talk about thinking outside the box, giving 110 percent, raising the bar, hitting the ground running, and going after the low-hanging fruit.
But perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing for everyday, on-the-run communication. After all, isn’t it more efficient to use clichés that everyone understands than to struggle to find creative alternatives whose very novelty may cause confusion? In organizations, many clichés serve as a shared language. In any case, even if we feel a worn-out phrase coming on as we speak, it’s not as if we can stop in midsentence to seek a more imaginative choice of words.
That’s not the case, though, with written documents. Because there’s more time to put thought into written material than spoken communication, it’s easier to avoid clichés. This doesn’t mean your initial efforts have to be cliché-free; after all, there’s no such thing as a perfect first draft. Instead, write what comes to mind, then review what you’ve written and replace clichés with words of your own choosing. If you’re not certain if a certain phrase is a cliché, see if it appears in any of the online lists of clichés.
Or, because no list of clichés is complete, use your common sense. If a document you’ve written includes a phrase you’ve heard repeatedly, think twice about including it. Of course, if the intended recipient is especially fond of “running things up the flagpole,” you might be wise to run things up the very same flagpole. Otherwise, scrap the phrase and find a better one. It may even prove to be not so difficult to do the same with your spoken communication once you become tuned in to all the hackneyed phrases being bandied about.
On the other hand, if you want to add some clichés to your communication, here’s the perfect place to start. Milk it for all it’s worth. Better late than never.
