Avoid clichés like the plague

Here's a way to instantly improve your writing, and you don't need to know a pronoun from a preposition to do it: Trash the clichés. Give them the boot. Avoid them like the plague. Don't let them show their face. Scrap them lock, stock and barrel. Think outside the box. Get the picture?

Dispatch these and other meaningless phrases to the Retirement Home for The Hackneyed. Most clichés got their start as original writing. The first scribbler who wrote that "the crowd roared with laughter" was engaging in clever wordplay. Now, when readers encounter such clichés, even if they don't recognize them as such, they dart right past them, and the wasted words barely cause a flutter of recognition.

Your cliché substitute doesn't have to be quotable, just accurate and effective. Often, when you take the time to swap a cliché for original writing, you'll gain insight about your subject that could be worth its weight in gold. Ugh!

Chip Scalan offers some tips on axing stale phrases in a column carried by Poynteronline. He even notes that a dictionary of clichés is now available.