Having another cliché day and learning about Pliny the Elder
- col-teri-stein
- September 4, 2024
- 317
In every writing class I’ve ever taken or writing article read, authors are advised to avoid clichés. This drives me crazy because there are so many titles of books over the years that are based on well-known phrases. I’ve read or seen titles from best-selling authors like “One for the Money,” “Now or Never,” “Roses Are Red,” “Along Came a Spider” and “Going Rogue.” Are they trying to keep this secret to success for themselves?
Do clichés make your writing unoriginal? Can you only be a savvy writer if you weed out clichés? Seriously? I find clichés interesting; they are history. Some cliches have been passed down through the decades and some even centuries.
I found a list of cliches in an article from last year. These clichés are to be avoided at all times to keep your writing from getting stale. Let’s see how many I can use in this column — nothing better than a good challenge.
For me clichés sometimes “fit the bill.” They are “just the ticket” for making sure everyone knows what you are talking about. Of course, when it comes to getting the correct information, it’s “better late than never.” Not knowing something pertinent could leave you “down in the dumps,” and it could even be the “end of the world” as we know it.
Too much information could be a curse, causing you to always question whether “the grass is always greener” or do you need to start “weeding things out.”
Spreading information indiscriminately might be caused by “a loose cannon,” and we all know that “loose lips sink ships.” OK, that last one was not on the list, but it was too good a fit not to add.
Without the correct information you could be “putting your eggs in one basket” and have to go “back to the drawing board.”
It’s vital to remember “every rose has its thorn.” That thorn could result in more than a physical injury. Be careful what you say because you don’t want to be “rubbing salt in the wound” or “adding insult to injury.”
Try to be positive so others don’t see you as someone who just has “an axe to grind.” It’s important to know when you are “barking up the wrong tree.”
Back to my most recent problem, paperless billing has got me “at wit’s end.” Checking banking websites multiple times each month to make sure our account is up to date makes me feel like I’m “beating a dead horse” or “fighting an uphill battle.”
But we can come up with new ideas that are “sharp as a tack” and “think outside the box” to solve the paperless billing problem. Yay, I used every cliché on the list.
FYI — I designed a form myself to track paperless billing that I can check at a glance, and I put the forms in a binder. Now I have a permanent written record of payment. I like writing stuff down.
So that is this edition of clichés “in a nutshell,” which, of course, means briefly or concisely. Surprisingly, this phrase was first coined more than 2,000 years ago by Pliny the Elder in his celebrated book “Natural History.” And copies are still available for purchase online.
Pliny the Elder lived from AD 23-79, mostly in Rome. He was known as a savant, and he is attributed to have written seven important documents. Except for “Natural History,” only a few fragments of these other works remain.
Unfortunately, Pliny the Elder was killed when, as a fleet commander in the Bay of Naples, he went ashore to check out a suspicious cloud formation after Mount Vesuvius erupted. He was overcome by fumes and died Aug. 24, 79. This information came from his nephew, and somewhere along the line, it got written down or we wouldn’t know about it today.
So, see, aren’t clichés interesting?