By Jim Schuh

When people get old, they often try to get rid of things they’ve saved. Several factors come into play, including an increasing realization of their mortality, and the fact that when they leave this world, someone will have to deal with all their stuff if they don’t do it soon; that surely goes for me.

As I was cleaning out some of my old and nearly forgotten files, I found a stack of material from “College Days for Kids,” an annual offering from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. UWSP provides the program for elementary school students to allow them to experience what it’s like to be in college. It’s also a recruitment tool for the university. As part of the program, I taught a class on writing for the ear versus the eye for several years.

My file contained several handouts I used in that class – some explained the difference between active and passive voice, not to be confused with present and past tense. In conversation, we mostly use the active voice while writers often use the passive voice. My aim was to help the kids write better.

I discovered a list of “Tired and Worn Out Clichés,” – phrases that belong in the junk heap. I chuckled as I read through them and thought it might be fun to share some of them with you. If you listen closely to TV newscasts, especially those on local TV, you’ll hear many of them; they’re awful. News directors should post the list on newsroom walls forbidding their reporters from using any of these bromides on the air. The clichés detract from their on-air presentations.

If you are a writer or a presenter, it would be good to eliminate these phrases from your product. Here are some examples of tired banalities, in alphabetical order:

“Agree to disagree,” “back to square one,” “beginning of the end,” “bite the bullet,” “blazing inferno,” “brave the elements,” “brutally murdered,” “calm before the storm,” “caught red-handed,” “chalked up a victory,” “collision course,” “comparing apples and oranges,” “cool as a cucumber,” “cutting room floor,” “daring daylight robbery,” “easier said than done,” “foregone conclusion,” “give the green light,” “gruesome find,” “handwriting on the wall,” and “hit the nail on the head.” You get the idea.

I say good writers should retire these phrases along with a whole bunch of others. “If the truth be told,” “in the limelight,” “in full swing,” “interestingly enough,” “keep a low profile,” “last but not least,” “matter of life and death,” “on cloud nine,” “only game in town,” “pool of blood,” “proud parents,” “shots rang out,” “shrouded in mystery,” “threw a monkey wrench into,” “tip of the iceberg,” “up for grabs,” “vanish into thin air,” “voiced approval,” and “when all is said and done.”

If you think about it, you have been bombarded with many of these expressions your whole lifetime. There are almost certainly better ways to say things; it just takes a bit of thinking and imagination.

News reporters and anchors are guilty of grammatical errors, which happen when they don’t vet their copy or have an editor review it. None of these mistakes will stop the world from spinning, but reporters who haven’t learned to write or don’t understand grammar perpetuate the use of poor English. Maybe nobody but grammarians cares, but my thinking is that if you want folks to think well of you, you should consider using correct English.

One of the most frequent errors is using a plural verb with a singular noun – “None are coming.”
“None” is a contraction of “No one,” so if you substitute it for “none” in your conversation, your ear will tell you it sounds wrong– “No one are coming” versus “no one is coming.” So, the proper form is “None is coming.”

Another frequent error is using a singular pronoun with a plural object – “Everybody” is allowed “their” opinion. Both need to agree – “everybody” is a singular pronoun) and “their” is a plural one. The proper form is, “Everybody is allowed ‘his’ (or ‘her’) opinion.”

Some argue this misuse has become so prevalent that we should just give up and say it’s okay.

I admit some folks may see these examples as nitpicky, but I argue that we should be able to speak and write our own language properly. I don’t see that as too much to expect.