American journalist Wolcott Gibbs once observed that "writers are full of clichés just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliché undoubtedly is one and had better be removed."
Clichés are the enemy of fresh and engaging prose, and we certainly don't need them in our writing. But before we can remove clichés, we need to be able to recognize them. The following web sites can help us to do just that.
Simply paste your draft of a paragraph or essay into Cliché Finder, and then click on "Find clichés." If you have relied on any of the worn-out (and often
redundant) expressions collected in the
Associated Press Guide to News Writing, your clichés will be highlighted. Just remember to replace those clichés with something more original.
Created in 1996 by S. Morgan Friedman, the Cliché Finder allows us to locate a cliché through a key-word search. How do we know if a particular word or phrase has become a cliché? Friedman recommends this strategy: "I read the first half of the sentence, and then I ask myself, 'Do I know (because everyone knows) how the sentence ends?'" Predictable endings help to identify clichés and clichéd thinking. Friedman also hosts a site called
WordCounter, which ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text.
ClichéSite.com hosts the Web's "largest collection of clichés." It's "as easy as pie" to locate clichés here: you can explore the categories, check the alphabetized lists, or conduct a cliché search.
Feeling lonely or afraid? Lost, heartbroken, overworked, or at wit's end? This site will show you how to reduce any profound emotional experience to a hollow cliché. Established in 1996, the Book of Clichés "lists phrases to say in times of trouble in a number of categories."
This site from AOL Music may not help you to improve your writing but it should make you more aware of the prevalence of clichés in pop culture.
Maintained by Giancarlo Cairella since 1994, the Movie Clichés List demonstrates that actions as well as words can quickly become trite and predictable on the "silver screen." Hundreds of "the most annoying and common logic flaws and stereotypes found in movies" are organized into categories ranging from airplanes ("Aircraft always disappear behind a clump of trees before exploding in a ball of flames") to wood ("Heroes and villains can successfully use wood, no matter how thin, as a safe shield against bullets of any caliber").
Michael P. Garofalo's collection (from the Spirit of Gardening web site) includes hundreds of over-worked expressions from "the outdoor life."
This page from the Writer's Web (University of Richmond) should help you to "identify the trite, overused, and plain tired expressions" that may have crept into your own writing.
Based on the presumption that "nothing of any importance has ever been said in a halftime analysis," Mike Hasselbeck's site collects the worn-out expressions of players, commentators, and lazy sportswriters. No question about it, you'll get your money's worth out of this site, which always gives 110 percent.
This "Arsenal of Clichés for the Successful American Politician" includes some terribly familiar slogans and sound bites along with a political cliché quiz.
