Collins Improve Your Writing Skills. Graham King

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СКАЧАТЬ such thoughtless and hurtful terms as nigger, coon, cripple and OAP; and no thinking person would now use the term mongoloid to describe a child suffering from Down’s Syndrome. And they have been especially successful righting the centuries-old imbalance between the sexes in the popular perception: the use of man as a suffix or prefix (manhandle, mankind, man-made, manpower, man in the street; foreman, chairman, one-man show, alderman, salesman, etc); sexist generalisations (doctors are usually thought of as ‘he’, nurses as ‘she’; home helps are always female, etc); and making writers, editors and broadcasters aware of the problem with the dominant male pronoun.

      While much of this is desirable rethinking, and even necessary, the PC police have unfortunately taken a few steps too far and are consequently ridiculed by many reasonable people. The campaign to expunge the E from VE Day (Victory over Europe Day), in order not to offend our near neighbours during the 50th anniversary of the end of World War Two celebrations, succeeded only in offending millions of British families who had lost loved ones in the conflict.

      The international campaign for so-called non-sexist language has led to what many people regard as euphemistic excess. Consider these recommendations from a recently-published manual from The Women’s Press:

a grandfather clock	should be called	a longcase clock
a granny knot	“	an unstable reef knot
an old master painting	“	a classic painting
the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street	“	the Bank of England
a Johnny come lately	“	an upstart
Tom, Dick and Harry	“	any ordinary person

      Recommendations to end the masculine tyranny of chess are even more controversial – or preposterous. Knights are to be renamed defenders or horseriders; kings become sovereigns and queens are deputy sovereigns.

      Such bizarre examples should be ample warning to every aspiring writer. Be sensible and sensitive towards people and institutions, whether minorities or majorities, but say what you mean!

A word to the wise about Clichés

      All things considered, avoid clichés like the plague

      We have all met people who have the extraordinary ability to talk in clichés:

       Y’know, not to beat around the bush or hedge your bet, this chapter is a must-read because it calls a spade a spade and in a nutshell leaves no stone unturned to pull the rug from under those off-the-cuff, old-hat bête noires called clichés.

      These are the people who’ve given the cliché its bad name. We all tend to use them, of course. Sometimes that familiar phrase is the neatest way of expressing yourself and most of us can, in a flash (cliché), unconsciously call up a few hundred of them to help us out in writing and conversation. But how aware are we of the irritation (or worse, sniggering) that the overuse of clichés can cause?

      If you want to use clichés only when appropriate and, avoid them when not, it helps to be able to recognise them. Give yourself this quick test: how many of these tired and well-worn expressions can you complete with the missing word

       COMPLETE THE CLICHÉ

      1 a gift from the . . . .

      2 light at the end of the . . . . . .

      3 weighed in the . . . . . . . and found wanting

      4 quantum . . . .

      5 paper over the . . . . . .

      6 fall between two . . . . . .

      7 blot on the . . . . . . . . .

      8 if you’ve got it, . . . . . .it

      9 the . . . . . not worth the candle

      10 it’s not over till the fat lady . . . . .

      Answers. 1. gods; 2. tunnel; 3. balance; 4. leap; 5. cracks; 6. stools; 7. landscape; 8. flaunt; 9. game’s; 10. sings

      Most clichés begin life as someone’s incredibly neat, timely or witty way of expressing or emphasising a thought. Because it is clever, a lot of people steal the phrase as their own. Multiply that by a few million and you have the desperately tired and overused husk of somebody’s originality.

      Many clichés are centuries old. If we say of a jilted bride-to-be that she was left in the lurch we are echoing a comment made by the English poet Gabriel Harvey in 1576. Thirty years earlier saw another writer, John Heywood, recognise that he knew what side his bread’s buttered on (1546). Clichés date from the Bible and more are minted, waiting in the wings (cliché) for clichédom, every day. These days a cliché can be born, adopted and be worn out in a matter of mere months.

      The grammarian Eric Partridge identified four kinds of cliché. There is the idiom that becomes so indiscriminately used that its original meaning becomes lost (to the manner born has become to the manor born because of the widespread belief that it means born to wealth and luxury, whereas it originally meant ‘following an established custom, or accustomed to a situation’ as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet 4:14). His second type includes phrases that have become so hackneyed that only the laziest writers and speakers ever use them (to nip in the bud; beyond the pale; down to the last detail).

      Partridge’s third group consists of foreign phrases (terra firma; in flagrante delicto; plus ça change) while his fourth comprises snippets and quotations from literature (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing from Pope, and Shakespeare’s a thing of beauty is a joy for ever).

      However we haven’t yet rounded up all the usual suspects (cliché). One serial offender (very modern cliché) is the ‘stock modifier’ – a Darby and Joan (cliché) combination of words that, often for no reason, are always seen together. A person isn’t moved; he or she is visibly moved; a person isn’t merely courteous, he or she is unfailingly courteous. These parasitic partners are really sly clichés and you should watch for them. To help you know these partners better, try matching these:

1	over-riding	A	consequences
2	woefully	B	apparent
3	far-reaching	C	inadequate
4	no-holds-barred	D	importance
5	increasingly	E	interview

      Answers: 1D; 2C; 3A; 4E; 5B

      If you make up your mind to watch out for clichés creeping into your speech and writing and to try to avoid them you’ll be surprised how easy it becomes to do without them – and how much fresher your writing becomes as a result.

      Here are a few you might remove from your vocabulary:

      An A to Z of Clichés to Avoid like the Plague

       accidentally on purpose

       accident waiting to happen

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