So, when you find yourself using the familiar generality that approxi-
mates roughly to what you want to say, stop and search for a word that
is more accurate and specific. Otherwise your readers will conclude
that you simply haven’t got the intellectual determination to pin your
ideas down precisely or, worse still, that you have few interesting ideas
of your own. Either way, they’re likely to assume that the vague sweep-
ing generalities you’ve used mean one thing, when you really mean
another.
If you were to claim, for example, that ‘Modern business methods
are destroying communities and exploiting the poor ’, this could mean
a number of different things to different people. To pin down exactly
what you want to say you would have to be more specific. What
methods in particular? In what way are they destroying communities?
And what specific groups are being exploited? Without this your readers
might broadly agree with you, but place little significance in what
you’re saying.Clichés
And, what’s more, the benefits of striving for greater clarity and preci-
sion in your use of language don’t end there. The more you force your-
self to search for a word that is the perfect vehicle for your idea, the
more you will have to draw on in the future. As a result, you’ll be less
likely to fall back on the familiar, reassuring, although empty, cliché.
Like jargon, clichés are often a sign that you haven’t pinned your idea
down accurately, or that you haven’t searched thoroughly for the exact
word that will carry your idea perfectly.
Yet, as most of us know, it’s not always easy to avoid clichés. Indeed,
it may not always be wise to. Cutting out all the clichés in your writing
can often make your prose sound stiff and cumbersome. A familiar
cliché conveying just the right emphasis and meaning will help you
produce prose that is nearer to talk in print, with a natural rhythm
that’s not strained and difficult to read.
Unfortunately, all too often the impact is quite the reverse. An empty
cliché, that does no real work beyond sounding cosy and familiar, can
sap our writing of its life and vigour. If you want your ideas to have
impact and your readers to appreciate that you really do have inter-
esting and original ideas, then avoid any word or phrase that doesn’t
do justice to your ideas, and this includes clichés.
So ask yourself, when a cliché comes to you in the middle of a
passage, does this convey what I want it to, or is this familiar phrase
encouraging me to adopt a thought structure that I didn’t want? And,Style – Simplicity 213HTW27 7/27/01 8:39 AM Page 213