Ron Carnell, on cliches

[dragonlady7]

I co-moderate the writing forum on a webdesign-community forum website. The forum's other moderator is a fellow who runs his own web business and also manages a massive poetry community. He is a fascinating fellow and his posts are rare but always valuable.

Someone began a thread, meant to be funny, about the type of language that, when seen on a webpage, kills your credibility immediately. He had a humorous composite essay made up of all the shite MBA-speak you see on insidious corporate websites, which immediately makes you want to run screaming.

And Ron posted a beautiful answer to it, explaining the underlying part that makes this language so awful. There's no highfalutin' reason for it: It's just that they're cliches. What's so awful about cliches?
Ron Carnell explains:

A cliché is typically a figure of speech that no longer requires me to pass through point X. I have gone from A to X to B so many times in the past that I no longer need your guidance and can immediately jump to where you indicate I should go. The path is a revisited journey, one I've made countless times, and will never reveal anything I didn't already understand. Just as importantly, I think, the cliché has robbed me of my sense of participation. Francis reminds us, in his first line, that catch is a participatory endeavor, necessarily involving at least two people. Both of the boys are active, not passive, participants. Good writing is the same, and effective communication only occurs when the writer forces the reader to think. Clichés are anathema to thinking.

I just thought I'd share that.