From the Editor’s Desk: Avoid Idiomatic Writing

Most writers are aware to avoid cliches, which in nonfiction writing often appear in the form of metaphor: blind eyes, cold shoulders, hearts of stone, and the like. We know not to make all of life into a journey, and not all love must occur on a battlefield. We refuse to read between lines, we play our cards wrong, and we do judge books by their covers. We know that cliched metaphors in your writing will turn off your readers faster than water off a duck's—You get the idea.
 
But cliche still creeps in. Many writers still can’t resist to punctuate their writing with casual colloquialisms in the form of stock phrases. A stock phrase is employed to punctuate a passage or to add emphasis. And so every thing that is “first” is also “foremost.” Everything that is “last” is also assured to not be “the least.” And all “opportunities” are “golden.”

I’m not sure why this tic prevails so often. I suspect many writers are convinced that their most sacred calling is to be informal, to “write like you speak,” to not offend with overly creative originality. And so we get a proliferation of stock phrases. But few prose habits will disengage your readers faster than the use of a stock phrase.
 
Modern corporate speak has been an incubator for this kind of intellectual laziness, cultivating metaphors into stock phrases that dominate communication. So we are forever moving needles, thinking outside of boxes, and touching bases.
 
But stock phrases should be avoided. They do not make your writing more approachable. They render it inert. No thought can occur inside of a stock phrase, and so no meaning can be conveyed by one. Indeed, the opposite is true: At best, for a brief moment, brains are shut off and autopilot takes over. No actual writing has occurred in that lapse, and so no real reading can occur either.
 
Stock phrasing signals laziness, and thus signals to the reader that at least some part of this piece need not be taken seriously. Readers recognize this, at least subconsciously. And at that point, the writer has lost his or her reader.
 
So remind yourself: Not every question has to be “burning.”
Not every first is “foremost.”
Not every “trial” is also a “tribulation.”
If you have a “little” of something, you don’t also automatically have to have “little to nothing” of that thing. You can just have a little of it.
Just because something is “lean,” does not require that it also be “mean.”
If something is “part” of something else, it doesn’t also have to be a “parcel” of that thing.
Not every “opportunity” is “golden.”
The “last” thing may or may not be the least of any list you are making.
And for god’s sake, and all that is holy in the world, when you build something, you build on, you don’t build “off of.” Nothing is built off of. One cannot build off of something else. (Poorly chosen prepositions are a tell-tale sign of lazy writing, but that’s a post for another day.)
Avoid cliches. Avoid idiomatic writing. Indeed, avoid any form of automated, algorithmic thinking.
—David J. Snyder