In the spirit of @lyzidiamond's recent threads teaching something while panic-refreshing twitter https://twitter.com/lyzidiamond/status/1238168498486022144, I'm going to tweet about writing and clichés. Ready? Let's go! (Or mute this, it's fine.)

"Out of an abundance of caution": a thread about clichés and what you can do about them in your writing

Honestly, I'm not much of a cliché hater. It's OK to use them from time to time, but let's circle back to that later.

Often, when you reach for clichés, it's because you're trying to put an incomplete thought into words. You and your reader know, at some level, that the cliché is a placeholder for something specific.

If you don't know what you want to say, using a cliché points vaguely in the direction of actually having thought it through without doing any of the work!

Let's consider "out of an abundance of caution." Apart from the overuse, we're all becoming acutely aware of how using it not only doesn't say anything helpful, it's withholding information.

Suppose I'm a bureaucrat announcing the cancellation of an event "out of an an abundance of caution." With that cliché, you know I'm avoiding risk, but I haven't said what risk I'm avoiding.

It could be that I'm trying to avoid criticism or that I'm worried about vulnerable people in my community and I'm trying to protect them. But because I "abundance of caution"-ed you, you don't know which of those I actually meant. You're left guessing at my real meaning.

Removing a cliché takes a bit work. You have ask yourself out what you mean. You have to think about what your audience needs from you. And you have to be willing to say what you think.

The occasional cliché is understandable and acceptable. Sometimes you need to say something and you don't have the time to find better words. It's OK.

We're circling back now, if you hadn't noticed. I wasn't sure when or how exactly we'd get back here and I needed a placeholder for that. "Circle back", clichéd as it is, is a well-understood placeholder.

But if you've got the time, take that clichéd-addled sentence and try rewriting it without the cliché. In that way, "circle back" can become "revisit this topic in a few tweets."

Avoiding clichés takes practice, but it makes your writing more interesting and builds trust with the reader. It's worth doing, as the last few days have no doubt illustrated.

I expanded this thread about avoiding clichés into this: https://ddbeck.com/avoiding-cliches/