Free advice
A reader of this blog once asked, I hope innocently, “What’s wrong with cliches?”
One answer is provided by Frank Kermode, writing about Martin Amis in Pieces of My Mind: Essays and Criticism, 1958-2002:
“The first thing to see to if you want to write well is to avoid doing bad writing, used thinking. The more positive requirements can be left till later, if only a little later. Cliches are an infallible symptom of used thinking.”
Comments
I know I wondered aloud in your direction on that matter in the past. While I can't disagree with the sentiment, I still have to wonder if the effort taken in avoiding a cliche surmounts its generalized nature.
"Pain at the pump" may be trite at this point, but what it's trying to express is done easily, and avoiding it, while it could be better writing, could also lose a reader trying to wade through a phrase twice its length for the same result.
Posted by: steegness | May 9, 2008 3:23 PM
Once, after I cut "rain didn't dampen the spirits" for the 1,000th time, I was confronted by a city editor for a then-great Midwestern newspaper who finally sputtered, "I don't have a problem with clichés!"
There was nothing more for me to say.
Posted by: Phillip Blanchard | May 9, 2008 7:18 PM
I know nothing of Mr Kermode, but Mr Amis is one of the cleanest writers I've read. Also one of the most absorbing.
Posted by: Patricia the Terse | May 10, 2008 2:04 AM
This is off topic, but the following ambiguous headline from Reuters just crossed my screen and I can't help mentioning it: "Zimbabwe's MDC to fight run-off against Mugabe." Considering that the MDC has in the past opposed any run-off election unless it was closely monitored by international observers, I took this to mean that their battle against the run-off was continuing. In fact, the headline should have read: "Zimbabwe's MDC accepts run-off against Mugabe" or something similar. One wonders if anyone at Reuters read this headline a second time.
Posted by: Rawley Grau | May 10, 2008 8:17 AM