To keep business and tech writing fresh, avoid cliches

Enough already with the cliches.

If you write about business, technology or niche subjects, you probably have to bat off the cliches like flies.

OK, did you notice that both of those sentences included cliches? That’s how hard it is to keep them out of your writing.

But you should keep them out, if you want your copy to feel fresh and original.

Here are a few business and technology cliches I’d love to put out to pasture – yes, that was another intentional cliche:

¤ Anything with level the playing field as in “This merger will level the playing field in the widgets industry.”

¤ At the end of the day when it’s used to mean “As a result” or “In the final analysis,” as in “At the end of the day this widget industry merger will be good for widger buyers everywhere.” If I hear this at the end of the day I want to shoot somebody.

¤ The fill-in-the-blank space, a commonly used expression in business and technology circles, as in “the outsourcing space,” “the talent management software space” or “the online security space”

¤ Likewise, solution as it pertains to software, as in “Our email software solution is the best.”

¤ On site – what’s wrong with “at your office” or “at the company”?

¤ “End user” as a description of someone who uses something, i.e. “The end user won’t understand how to operate this smart phone without a manual.” When did saying “people” go out of style?

¤ The Internet “bubble” – burst it now, please.

¤ Anything with 2.0 at the end of it. Web 2.0. Media 2.0. Parenting 2.0. I’m as guilty as the next person on this one, it’s just such a great short-hand way of saying the next generation of something. But it’s been overused and as my son would say, “That killed it.”

if you want to read more on cliches, here’s a great piece from The Weekly Standard called “The Cliche Community”, by writer and self-proclaimed “word grouch” Andrew Ferguson.