How to Instantly Improve Your Writing: Edit Out the Cliches

Would you like to instantly improve your writing? Try editing for unnecessary cliches. Of course, if you really need a simile or a metaphor to make a point, use it, but use them sparingly. Challenge yourself to vary your word choices; you'll be surprised at how much more original you sound. Let's look at a few of which we all have been guilty.

Getting the creative juices flowing
What juices would those be? Creativity is associated with the brain; does the person using this cliche refer to spinal fluid? I have to say no thank you to a glass of creative juices, and move on to the next phrase.

Spice up
This is another way of saying "vary" by using a once clever food metaphor. And I mean it was clever the one time it was said for the first time. Why must we associate everything with food? Aren't Americans fat enough without having to be reminded of food when we aren't cooking or eating it?

First and foremost
You are being redundant. "Foremost" means "first." You will never get to first place if the foremost thing you do is to slow yourself down with two words that mean the same thing. So either say "first" or "foremost."

Stake my claim
You're going to impale whatever it is that you want with wooden stakes? Won't it be worthless with holes poked in it? Besides, you're not "staking your claim" on this phrase because it has been idiomatic since the 1800s. Just plain "claim," the verb, is fine.

Blow the whistle
Now you're a referee?

By no means
This is another way to say "not." It is the kind of thing people who think they are smart say when they write angry letters to the editor and other people laugh at them. Besides, it sounds to me like the person is saying, "no matter how you get this done you shouldn't do it at all." And that makes no sense, because if you don't want me to go to Minneapolis at all, why do you care whether I take a bus or a train? You just like to hear your own voice say blah, blah, blah. See also "by all means."

Open minded
Does this mean you are easily influenced by others? Do you change your mind often? I don't think it means what people think it means, because the subtext here is that the open minded are somehow different and better than the people who they deem "close minded;" this paradoxically makes them close minded as well.

Laid back
What this phrase is essentially saying is, "I value other people's opinions more than my own." This is a damn lie. People are as attached to their opinions as they are to their assholes in that other cliche.