Clichés Fail Because the Reader Skips Them
At the end of the day, we need to think outside the box and take it to the next level.
Every phrase in that sentence was once vivid. All of them are now furniture.
The actual problem
Clichés are not grammatically wrong, and they are not unclear. Everyone knows what think outside the box means.
The problem is that the reader’s eye does not stop. A familiar phrase is processed as one chunk rather than read, which means whatever you attached to it is processed as a chunk too — and forgotten as quickly.
Orwell put it as writing being gummed together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. Note that he made his point with an image nobody had used before, which is the argument demonstrating itself.
The dead metaphor test
Most clichés are metaphors that have stopped being pictures. Ask whether you can still see the image.
- The tip of the iceberg — can you see the iceberg? Probably not.
- A level playing field — is anyone picturing a field?
- Low-hanging fruit — the fruit is gone.
When the picture is gone, the phrase is doing nothing an ordinary word would not do more briefly. Low-hanging fruit is three words for easy.
The mixed metaphor
The tell that a metaphor is truly dead is that it can be combined with an incompatible one and nobody notices:
- We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
- Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater until we’ve kicked the tyres.
If the writer could still see the images, the collision would be obvious. Mixed metaphors are proof that the phrases had become sounds.
Business English is the worst offender
Circle back, touch base, move the needle, boil the ocean, drink from the firehose, run it up the flagpole, synergy, leverage as a verb, going forward.
These spread because they signal membership. Using the vocabulary shows you belong, which is a real social function — and it is not the same as communicating.
The test is whether a newcomer would understand. If a phrase requires membership to parse, it is jargon whatever else it is.
When to keep them
- In dialogue. People speak in clichés. A character who never does sounds artificial.
- When the alternative is worse. Straining for originality produces prose that is harder to read than the cliché was. A tired phrase beats a laboured fresh one.
- When it is genuinely the clearest expression. Some fixed phrases have no compact replacement, and reaching for one wastes the reader’s time to satisfy the writer’s vanity.
The fix
Do not hunt for a fresher metaphor. Say the thing plainly instead.
We need to think outside the box → the usual approach has not worked. Shorter, clearer, and it commits you to a claim — which is exactly what the cliché was helping you avoid.
Checked against Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Spotted an error? Tell us — see our editorial policy.
