Clichés and Hackneyed Expressions

Your first-level edit will weed out every cliché and hackneyed expression that most writers use in their first drafts. George Orwell said that: "Modern writing at its worst … consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else and making the results presentable by sheer humbug."

There are many clichés and overused expressions – too many to list here - but you'll find lists of these on the internet, or in books from your library or local bookshop shelf. You can even purchase a software program (A Cliché Cleaner) to do the job for you; I have never used one so cannot speak about the effectiveness or otherwise of these programs.

If a word or phrase that you've used seems familiar, it's probably been used many times elsewhere, in which case you need to find some other way of expressing the same thought or idea.