Slang and Cliches:

Choose your words carefully when you write.  develop the habit of selecting words that are precise and appropriate for your purpose. You must avoid slang, cliches, pretentious words, and wordiness.

Slang:

When we talk, we often use slang words because they are vivid and colorful. In formal writing, however, slang has no place. 

Consider The Following:

• • • When we told the neighbors to can the noise, they freaked out.
    • I didn't know how messed up John was until he stole money from his parents and split.
    • After a hard day, I like to veg out in front of the idiot box.
    • John was wiped out after his workout at the gym that he couldn't get it together to defrost a frozen dinner.
    • When Paul tried to put the move on Maria, she told him to shove off.
    • My father claims that most grease monkeys are rip-off artists.
    • After the game, we stuffed our faces at the dinner.
    • The movie grossed me out.

Cliches:

A cliche is an expression that has been worn out through constant use. Although they are common in speech, they make writing seem stale.  You should avoid cliches and try to express your meaning in original ways. Here are some typical cliches: 

 

short but sweet	last but not least	drop in the bucket	work like a dog
all work and no play	word to the wise	it goes without saying	it dawned on me
at a loss for words	sigh of relief	too little, too late	too a turn for the worse
singing the blues	easier said than done	on top of the world	in the nick of time
too close for comfort	time and time again	saw the light	make ends meet

 

Pretentious Words:

Some people feel they can improve their writing by using fancy. elevated words rather than simple, natural words.  They use artificial language that more often obscure their meaning than communicates it clearly. Here are some inflated words you ought to avoid and replace with simpler words:

Pretentious Words	Revised
subsequent to	after
finalize	finish
transmit	send
facilitate	help
component	part
initiate	begin
delineate	describe
manifested	shown
to endeavor	to try

Generic: 

We often use words such as good, bad, wonderful etc.. in our writing.  Thinking about the meaning of such words, you will find that they are vague and do not describe precisely what you want to describe.  It is much better to avoid such vocabulary.

Wordiness:

Using more than necessary words to express a meaning is often a sign of lazy or careless writing. 

Consider The Following:

"In this paper I am planning to describe the hobby that I enjoy of collecting old comic books."  This sentence is too wordy and can be reduced to: "I enjoy collecting old comic books."

Here is a list of wordy expressions and their revision:

Wordy	Revised
at the present time	now
in the event that	if
in the near future	soon
due to the fact that	because
for the reason that	because
is able to	can
in every instance	always
in this day and age	today
during the time that	while
a large number of	many
big in size	big
red in color	red
return back	return
commute back and forth	commute
postponed until later	postponed