I was delighted when personal finance writer Tom Saler submitted this analogy in a blog post on investing in emerging markets:

Emerging markets are more volatile than developed markets in the same way that teenagers are more volatile than adults. Of course, teens have more growth potential than their elders as well. So how can investors capture that growth, while still limiting their risk?

Comparing emerging markets to teenagers is a fresh, surprising analogy.

Plus, Tom managed to write an investing story that didn’t contain a single egg analogy. In the world according to Ann, writers should avoid common clichés like “nest egg” or “all your eggs in one basket.”

Shift imagery to avoid clichés.

To avoid clichés in your own writing Shift imagery, suggests Tad Simons, editor in chief of Presentations magazine. Try gardening, dancing or cooking images instead.

“If you say someone’s elevator doesn’t go to the top or that they aren’t playing with a full deck of cards, you’re just regurgitating a cliché,” Simons writes. “But if you say they aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer or they’re a few fries short of a Happy Meal, you’re at least using different imagery to say the same thing.”

Michael C. Porter, APR, and president of SopraVoce Communications, invites you to consider these metaphors:

• Brain function
• An organism and its environment
• Rivers and oceans
• Ancient cultures
• A growing plant

Shifting imagery is one way to avoid lazy writing and make your analogies fresher. Here are some other fresh images I’ve enjoyed lately:

• Bonzai — careful pruning and the like — as a metaphor for managed financial growth.
• Software testing to shrug off a problem. “Hey, life is a beta,” writes Purple Cow author Seth Godin.
• Bespoke tailoring for a story about customizing your financial portfolio to your own needs and dreams. Think: “the perfect fit,” “one size never really does fit all,” “measure twice, cut once,” “fits like a glove.”
• A well-balanced diet (instead of “all your eggs in one basket”) for diversifying your financial portfolio. This extended metaphor included ideas like: Does your financial diet include too much of a good thing? Stocks, bonds and cash are the three basic food groups of a good portfolio. Just as eating only iceberg lettuce isn’t healthy, an equities diet of nothing but large-cap stocks isn’t the best approach for the health of your portfolio.

So skip the sports and war analogies. Try gardening, clothing, dining or ballroom dancing  instead. The result will be fresher, more thoughtful images.

Because the world already has too many golf analogies.

Rethink your metaphor.

I love this meme of over-the-top analogies from high-school students’ papers. Use them for inspiration on how to rethink a metaphor to the edge — but not over it.

• His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
• From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
• He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
• Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
• The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil.  But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
• It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

How can you think like a 9th grader to refresh tired analogies?

Discard your first three ideas. 

Don’t use the first comparison that comes to mind, Simons suggests. In fact, discard the first three things that come to mind. Push past your conventional way of thinking to come up with fresh metaphors that really say something new to your audience members.

____

Sources: Michael C. Porter, APR, “Leveraging the power of metaphor in public forums,” PRSA Tactics, May 2005

Tad Simons, “Mastering the Art of Metaphor,” Presentations Magazine, June 2001

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Call it a cliché makeover.

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, breathes new life into old, worn-out phrases in a letter to shareholders. His secret: extending the original metaphor the cliché was based on:

Scott Moser, the CEO of Equitas, summarized the transaction neatly: “Names wanted to sleep easy at night, and we think we’ve just bought them the world’s best mattress.”

By extending the cliché “sleep easy at night” with “the world’s best mattress,” Buffett gives this tired phrase new life. (Back story: Berkshire reinsured Equitas so its “names,” or underwriters, don’t have to worry about huge claims bankrupting the firm and themselves).

A metaphor is a figure of speech that helps people make a semantic shift, aka think differently about your topic. Cliché —  also called dead metaphors — just make readers eyes glaze over.

Next time you find yourself writing a historical metaphor (time is running out, flying off the handle, head over heels, max black), try one of these approaches to resurrecting a metaphor:

1. Reinvent a cliché.

A.G. Edwards uses this technique in its Silver Anvil-winning “nest egg” ad series. The investment firm reinvents one of my least-favorite clichés by making it visual and extending it as far as it can go.

Instead of eliminating your next cliché, see if you can take it further. By doing so, you might just resurrect it.

2. Refresh a cliché.

You might also try refreshing a cliché. To refresh a cliché:

1. Circle all the clichés in your message
2. Refresh them by writing a new ending

Get inspiration from this list. Story goes that it was created when a first-grade teacher collected clichés and asked her students to come up with new endings for tired clichés.

• A penny saved is … not much 
• Better safe than … punch a fifth-grader 
• Don’t bite the hand that … looks dirty 
• If at first you don’t succeed … get new batteries 
• It’s always darkest before … Daylight Savings Time 
• You can lead a horse to water but … how? 
• You can’t teach an old dog new … math 

Hey! If a group of first-graders can do it, imagine how engaging your “new clichés” will be.

3. Twist a cliché.

You can also “Twist a cliche.” To do that, sub out a traditional word in the cliché for a new one.

Instead of dog tired, for instance, ask, “Who else is really tired? New mothers? People working double shifts? Hospital interns?”

4. More ways to revive a cliché.

Here are four more ways to breathe new life into old, worn-out phrases in the body of an essay:

1. Reverse a cliché. Replace a key word in the cliché with one that means the opposite. One character on “The Closer,” for instance, “compliments” another on a eulogy: “There wasn’t a wet eye in the house.”
2. Combine clichés. Put two clichés together to create a fresh phrase. Lyrics to one “Flight of the Conchords” song, for instance, go, “The fork in the road cuts like a knife.”
3. Twist a cliché. Go through the letters of the alphabet to change the word. Or rearrange the letters in the word. Or add an incorrect word or phrase. Or substitute a double-entendre for a common word.

What dead metaphor can you resurrect in your own message?

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Academics call clichés dead language.

Writers should avoid clichés in writing as they do with other types of lazy writing. To avoid lifeless language, cut common clichés in your own writing. Here are three ways to replace tired clichés in your writing with fresh metaphors:

1. Search and destroy clichés.

Use these six steps to identify clichés that need to be replaced:

1. Review your piece of writing.
2. Test your metaphors for overuse. Plug the term into Google, and see how many links you get. “When I plugged in ‘grim task,’ I found 55,400 links,” writes Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute senior scholar. “But the most common use came from journalists reporting on crime, accidents and natural disasters.” If you get too many hits, your phrase is overused. It’s a cliché, not a metaphor.
3. Test your metaphors for vividness. A working metaphor paints a picture in your mind. No picture, no metaphor. You’re probably looking at a cliché.
4. Test your metaphors for timeliness. It’s Ann Wylie’s rule of metaphors: “If we don’t do it literally any more, we can’t do it literarily any more.”
5. Circle every cliché. Each one is a sign that your message needs a metaphor.
6. Substitute fresh metaphors for tired clichés. Write new analogies that your contemporary audience can actually relate to.

2. Conduct a cliché watch.

Want to make sure your website isn’t packed with clichés? Try this approach:

• Make a list of clichés you want to avoid. Make this list part of your site’s or organization’s style guide.
• Search your site to see how often you use them. 
• Replace those clichés with fresh metaphors.

You may be surprised at how much your messages rely on dreary, overused phrases. Once you find them, avoid clichés by substituting new metaphors for old idioms.

3. Avoid ‘first-level creativity.’

When writing a metaphor, don’t use the first comparison that comes to mind, counsels Roy Peter Clark, Poynter Institute senior scholar. He writes: 

“When tempted by a tired phrase, ‘white as snow,’ stop writing. Take what the practitioners of natural childbirth call a ‘cleansing breath.’ Then jot down the old phrase on a piece of paper. Start scribbling alternatives …

“I have described one cliché of vision as ‘first-level creativity.’ For example, it’s impossible to survive a week of American journalism without reading or hearing the phrase: ‘But the dream became a nightmare’ …

“Writers who reach the first level of creativity think they are being original or clever. In fact, they settle for the ordinary, the dramatic or humorous place any writer can reach with minimal effort.”

Take Clark’s advice.

If your “analogies” flow from your fingertips with no thought at all … perhaps it’s because you haven’t been thinking enough. And without thinking, you’re more likely to call up a cliché than a fresh metaphor.

Back away from the computer. Breathe. Do not push “send” until you’ve come up with a second — or better, third — comparison.

____

Source: Roy Peter Clark, “Alas, poor writer,” PoynterOnline, Aug. 4, 2007

Roy Peter Clark, “Seek Original Images,” The Poynter Institute, June 2, 2004

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Oh, how I miss the late, great Jargonator, the Gable Group’s tool to help PR pros cut buzzwords from their releases.

Here are three items from the site’s list of the most offensive PR buzzwords:

• Leading. “Trying to find a press release without the word ‘leader’ is like trying to find a Diet Coke in a Pepsi plant.”
• Best-of-breed. “Why would anyone use a phrase that can be just as easily applied to a Chihuahua or a poodle?”
• Solution. “The most overused word in press releases today. Companies used to sell products, now they sell solutions. Dog food bowls are pet-feeding solutions, chairs are sitting solutions, cars are transportation solutions.”

You (or your approvers) may think that buzz phrases — aka words or phrases from Silicon Valley, management, marketing or popular culture — make your message sound more important. But they are actually barriers to communication that make your messages harder to read and understand. (Play a few rounds of Buzzword Bingo if you’re not convinced.)

Stop ‘making the world a better place.’

I love how the characters on HBO’s “Silicon Valley” overuse the phrase, “Making the world a better place.”

Take this speech from the pilot:

And, from another episode:

And the stuff runs screaming for the door …

It seems so ridiculous, but don’t forget how often you hear this level of jargon in real life. Recently The New Republic CEO Guy Vidra said he would transform the 100-year-old publication into a “vertically integrated digital media company.”

For senior editor Julia Ioffe and a bunch of her colleagues, it meant that it was time to leave.

“We don’t know what their vision is,” she said. “It is Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo buzzwords that don’t mean anything.”

Does this buzzword make my brain look big?

Of course you have my permission to make fun of corporate buzzwords, as The Principal’s Derek Lippincott does with this delightful glossary:

• Competencies: Things we don’t suck at.
• Core: Everything is “core” these days. Core values. Core competencies. Core capabilities. Core – Porate jargon.
• Incentivize: The act of planning to give someone a die-cast NASCAR to award a desired behavior.
• Opportunity: Saying “improving claims accuracy is an opportunity for Bob” means BOB SUCKS AT CLAIMS. People need to tell Bob he needs to work on his claims, not say he has an “opportunity” to get better.
• Task: When used as a verb. “I’m going to task Paula to go get me a cookie.”

Avoid business buzzwords.

But with that exception, please think again before using corporate buzz phrases like these in your messages:

• Leveraging our assets
• Mission-critical
• Conversate
• Information touchpoint
• Synopsize
• Electronify
• Price-optimized
• Targeted completion date
• Relanguage
• Computerate
• Critical path
• Professional learning community

You’re not making the world a better place. You’re just making your readers crazy.

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Like humans, metaphors have life spans. They’re born; they live full, productive lives; they grow old; they die. They’d even stay dead, if we’d let them.

But too often, writers drag these literary corpses around for so long, they start to really stink up our messages.

One solution: Make sure you know the difference between novel, conventional, dead and dead² (that’s really, really dead) metaphors. Researchers Brian F. Bowdle and Dedre Gentner explain it all to us in “The Career of Metaphor” (PDF).

1. Metaphors are born.

Metaphors are figures of speech. When they are born, they’re called novel metaphors.

Here’s a novel metaphor:

Science is a glacier.

Readers understand the literal meaning of glacier: “a large body of ice spreading outward over a land surface.” And while we’re not familiar with the metaphorical sense, we understand that it means something that “progresses slowly but steadily.”

Readers take longer to process novel metaphors than any other kind. And that processing time pays off.

Novel metaphors open new avenues of thought for readers. If love is a rose, for instance, could jealousy be a weed? That might help you extend your metaphor throughout the body of your essay.

2. They live full, productive lives.

Metaphors in their prime are called conventional metaphors.

Here’s a conventional metaphor:

A gene is a blueprint.

Readers understand the metaphorical meaning — “something that provides a plan” — in part before they’ve heard it before.

Because of that familiarity, readers take less time processing conventional metaphors than novel ones.

Conventional metaphors read more like comparisons or categorizations. For instance, if the sun is a tangerine, readers understand that both belong to groups of things that are round and things that are orange.

However, categorical metaphors are less likely to generate semantic shifts or additional meanings. (And, like a tangerine, the sun makes a refreshing, healthy snack on a hot day …)

3. They die.

Academics call dead metaphors dead¹ metaphors. Because of course they do.

Here’s a dead¹ metaphor:

A university is a culture of knowledge.

Here, readers lose the literal meaning: We assume the word culture refers to a particular heritage or society.. But in fact, in this metaphor, culture refers to a bacteria culture, aka “a preparation for growth.” 

However, because of overuse or time, neither of these meanings seem related to universities. (Overused metaphors: time is running out, flying off the handle, head over heels, max black.)

There’s another word for dead¹ metaphors: cliché.

4. And they get really, really dead.

Then there are really, really dead metaphors — aka dead² metaphors.

Here’s a dead² metaphor:

“Star Wars” was a blockbuster.

These historical metaphors have lost the meaning of the original metaphor altogether. Today, blockbuster seems to mean “anything that is highly successful.” 

But back in the day, blockbuster referred to a bomb that could demolish an entire city block.

Dead¹ and dead² metaphors don’t give readers any new way to think about the topic. They take up space without adding meaning.

Write novel metaphors.

So which type of metaphor works best?

Two researchers reviewed 41 data-based studies on the persuasiveness of metaphor published between 1952 and 2006. Then they analyzed the studies to determine what made metaphors more or less persuasive.

Among their findings: More novel metaphors were more persuasive (effect size: .129) than conventional metaphors or clichés (.008).

“We uncovered only two instances out of 14 in which the use of metaphor might be detrimental to the goal of generating agreement with the message advocacy,” the researchers says: putting the metaphor at the end of an argument and using clichés.

Don’t let literary zombies eat your readers’ brains. Cut clichés — and replace them with novel metaphors.

___

Sources: Brian F. Bowdle and Dedre Gentner, “The Career of Metaphor,” Psychological Review, 2005, Vol. 112, No. 1, 19 3-216

Pradeep Sopory and James Price Dillard, “The Persuasive Effects of Metaphor: A Meta-Analysis,” Human Communication Research, January 2006

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In 1832, French printers noted the sound metal plates made when they were cast from the original and then used to make copies:

Click.

Or, in French

Clichér.

Fifty-some years later, somebody borrowed that jargon to refer to phrases that sounded as if they’d been copied from something else. And that’s where the word “cliché” comes from.

Clichés make your writing sound like copies of copies of someone else’s original language.

That’s lazy writing. Writers should avoid common clichés in writing.

Don’t let your writing be a copy: Substitute original metaphors for overused clichés.

Why avoid clichés?

“Words have power; the words strung together in clichés have lost some or all of their power. Clichés are a sign of a mind at rest. Writing is work. Your job as a writer is to suck people into your world.”

— Sol Stein, author, playwright, poet, editor and publisher, in Dialogue for Writers

Why substitute vivid metaphors for worn-out clichés?

• Through time and overuse, clichés have become old, tired and worn-out. “Some writers still imagine that ‘Where’s the beef?’ has resonance,” says John Early McIntyre, ACES president and assistant managing editor for the copydesk at the Baltimore Sun. And don’t you want to shake writers who still use “Build it, and they will come”?
• Some clichés have become meaningless. “Repeats like a broken record,” for instance, doesn’t mean anything to audiences born after 1980 who were raised on streaming audio. 
• A cliché is something we say without thinking … so how could it help our audience members think any differently about our topic?

Many clichés started out as “similes (hard as nails, like taking candy from a baby), metaphors (the mother of all battles, a web of lies), or analogies (throw the baby out with the bathwater, up the creek without a paddle),” write the editors of Publication Management magazine.

That makes these comparisons the perfect substitute for clichés.

Avoid literary taxidermy.

Or, here’s another way to look at it: Clichés are dead language.

Here’s how Bert O. States, professor emeritus of Dramatic Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara, puts it:

“When metaphors die … they become idioms: idioms being what we know so well that we see straight through it, as Shakespeare’s ‘Not a mouse stirring.’ Indeed, as Francis Sparshott has put it, ‘a language is nothing but a necropolis of dead metaphors.’ Or, as Stanislaw Lec, another aphorist, put it, ‘In the beginning there was the Word — at the end, just the Cliché.’”

If clichés are dead language, then writing with clichés is a form of literary taxidermy.

We writers keep propping up lifeless phrases, pretending they can live forever, however stinky and disgusting their corpses get. Still, we keep displaying their remains, sometimes for centuries after they’ve passed away.

Does it paint a picture? 

Take the phrase:

He got the sack. 

Or:

He got sacked.

Today, we use it to mean “he lost his job” or “he got fired.”

Do you see a sack? Probably not.

And that’s one test for a cliché in writing: Analogies are meant to bring your message to life by painting pictures in your readers’ minds.

No picture? No analogy. 

You need to refresh the phrase.

The reason you don’t see a sack is that the phrase “to get the sack,” according to Charles Earle Funk’s A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions, goes back to the Middle Ages, when it referred to the ancient Roman punishment of stuffing condemned people into sacks and throwing them into the river to drown.

Anyone who’s ever lost a job knows that is exactly what it feels like. So “to get the sack” was a fabulous metaphor — when Roman officials actually stuffed people into sacks and threw them in the river to drown.

But now that we don’t practice that custom any more, the metaphor has lost the power and meaning of the original. It has become a cliché.

Remember:

If we don’t do it literally any more, we can’t do it literarily any more.

If we don’t really stuff people into sacks and throw them in the river to drown, we shouldn’t refer to that custom in a metaphor.

Substitute metaphors for clichés.

The good news is, metaphors make the perfect substitutes for clichés. That’s because most clichés were once fresh, exciting metaphors.

Through time and overuse, though, they’ve become old, tired and worn out.

Dead.

Bury your literary corpses. Replace your taxidermied phrases with living, breathing metaphors.

____

Sources: Curt Hazlett, “Become an Inventor of Fresh Language: Avoid Clichés,” BusinessJournalism.org, May 30, 2007

Bert O. States, “Troping Through Proverbia,” The American Scholar, September 2001

“Take my cliché — please,” Publications Management, July 2007

Ann Wylie, Make Magic With Metaphor, Wylie Communications Inc., 2004

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