(The Conversation) – If some words are shovel-ready for a conversation, but using them could lead to accusations that you’re not giving 110%, then should you stick a pin in them? Or perhaps you could ...

Clichés, says CU Boulder lexicographer Orin Hargraves, are "the comfort food of speech." And that's not a good thing. So while writing his new book "It's Been Said Before," he aimed to become a cliché ...

Any writing expert will tell you: If you want to get your message across, avoid clichés. The problem is, no one seems to know what, exactly, a cliché is. Is it an overused sentence like “The grass is ...

Clichés are about as useful as lipstick on a pig. Also, re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Not to mention bringing coals to Newcastle. But are they as useless as all that? So grammarians, ...

Imagine this: a director tells you your filmmaking style is "derivative" or calls your big finale “predictable.” It’s cliché, they say. Stings a bit, doesn't it? In filmmaking, "cliché" is that brutal ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. If some words are shovel-ready for a conversation, but using them could lead to accusations that you’re not giving 110%, then ...

If some words are shovel-ready for a conversation, but using them could lead to accusations that you’re not giving 110%, then should you stick a pin in them? Or perhaps you could read the room better ...