• CLICHÉS & PAT EXPRESSIONS:

clichés, pat expressions, aphorisms, sayings, figures of speech, euphemisms

• These are stock phrases that should be avoided in student writing

• B/C:

  • they are unoriginal, trite, banal, hackneyed, overused

    • it's not that they're untrue; it's that they're unoriginal

  • once striking, clever, creative, poetical, elegant

    • they have lost their initial power and meaning

    • through overuse, excess, abuse

      • they're meaningless, tired, ineffective

      • as stale as chewing gum after an hour

        • (you wouldn't chew the gum under your desk!)

  • Salvador Dali, in his preface to Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1968), speaks directly to this point:

    • "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot" (2).

• your essay = your thoughts = your words

  • think for yourself!

  • use them in a rough draft but edit them out through the revision process