Clichés are bad for Website Content. Here’s 15 to Seriously Avoid.
I think that everybody in their life will have used a cliché either in writing or oral communication. Clichés have their time and place but they aren’t fit for your websites content. Why? Because clichés are tired, overdone and lazy (sorry to rain on your parade).
Clichés are popular with modern writers because they offer the ability to purvey a message that’s familiar to the reader. The trouble is, clichés have a life cycle that’s very short. Once they are used too often they lose their value and can portray a writer as uninterested in their subject.
Content writing for the web should always be simple and to the point. It should always be scannable and consistently relevant to the reader. Avoiding the use of clichés is easy once you know which the most appealing are to the modern writer. So, we’ve listed them.
Find 10 clichés to seriously avoid in your content writing below. There’s only 15 so you don’t bite off more than you can chew. Enjoy!
1. At the end of the day
2. Think outside the box
3. To all intents and purposes
4. All that glitters is not gold
5. The early bird gets the worm
6. Keep your eye on the ball
7. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do
8. Too big for his/her boots
9. Wet your whistle
10. In the nick of time
11. It’s the exception that proves the rule
12. Middle of the road
13. Between a rock and a hard place
14. Let the cat out of the bag
15. Kill two birds with one stone
Do you have any other clichés that you’re sick of seeing in writing on the web? Be sure to share them with us by commenting below, on Facebook or through Twitter @content_hero.
Get in touch with the team at Content Hero today to maximise your content marketing strategy with engaging, relevant and searchable content. Email us at info@contenthero.co.uk.
Jakk Ogden
Jakk Ogden is the founder and CEO of Content Hero.
To me, clichés and stock phrases serve similar functions – I’m not sure they’re so much about conveying a message to the reader as much as they’re about communicating quickly (and lazily).
You can avoid using clichés fairly easily, but it’s much more difficult to eradicate all the stock phrases we’re accustomed to using.
(“Accustomed to using” – just used one there.)
The American novel, Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier is an amazing example of a work almost entirely devoid of stock phrases. It wasn’t just that his sentences had never been written before, even the parts and fragments of the sentences were new.
Hi Brad,
Thank you for the comment. I completely agree with you. Perhaps I could do another write up on stock phrases in the future.
The book you mentioned is one of my must reads. I simply must get round to that!
J