Chris Pash's Blog, page 13

Cliche of the Week 14 – Pleased to Announce

I am pleased to announce the result of a study that will empower communications going forward.

Being pleased adds little meaning. The reader will quickly determine the state of emotion of those making the announcement from the facts presented.

And the fact that this is an announcement — management appointments, new products, and acquisitions and mergers — will be obvious, but not always pleasing.

In a study of 685,000 press releases issued over three months, the phrase ranked the fourth...

Cliche of the Week 13 – Pleased to Announce

I am pleased to announce the result of a study that will empower communications going forward.

Being pleased adds little meaning. The reader will quickly determine the state of emotion of those making the announcement from the facts presented.

And the fact that this is an announcement — management appointments, new products, and acquisitions and mergers — will be obvious, but not always pleasing.

In a study of 685,000 press releases issued over three months, the phrase ranked the fourth...

Cliche of the Week 13 – Cut Through

Cutting through the clutter of politic-speak feels like digging a shallow grave with a laser pointer.

While football players cut through the defence to score goals and marketers dream of cutting through the masses to reach the right audience, politicians struggle to cut through to win headlines and secure votes.

"Julia Gillard has struggled to cut through public concern about Labor's June 24 dumping of Kevin Rudd" (The Australian, August 9).

"Certainly, Mr Rudd's critique on Thursday as to why M...

Cliche of the Week 12 – Hard Yards

Doing the hard yards ensures success in sport and in life, but not in language skills.

Sports writers find this a useful way to describe effort: "The hard yards take place during training sessions when skills are honed and athletes ensure their bodies are finely tuned" (Tweed Daily News, August 12).

More recently the phrase has been adapted by politicians as a backhanded way of saying how hard and how smart they've been working.

Treasurer Wayne Swan: "We've done the hard yards. Mr Abbott has no ...

Cliche of the Week 11 – Anytime Soon

Moving forward, we are unlikely to see change anytime soon in the written usage of cliches.

The phrase "anytime soon" appears in the media globally around 30,000 times a month. In Australia, it's a minor player at 25 times a week.

"Whoever wins the job, a transition isn't likely to happen anytime soon." (July 21, Wall Street Journal)

Usage of 'antime soon' in global media, according to Dow Jones Factiva

"Although he pines for some degree of normalcy to return to his life, he knows that won't...

Cliche of the Week 10 – Fair Dinkum

Fair dinkum, more a colloquialism except during an election campaign, is used in reporting worldwide as much as it is written in Australia.

In the past three months it's appeared 1000 times in local media, and outside Australia mainly in British newspapers.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott uses fair dinkum as a way to say honest or serious — both when he attacks and when he makes a promise.

When debating Julia Gillard: "If the Prime Minister is fair dinkum about stopping the boats, if she's fair...

Cliche of the Week 9 – Safe Haven

Working families seeking safe haven from election-speak should be moving forward.

That's the same as going forward, an example of fuzzy middle-management jargon infecting the media.

Nothing like an election to bring out imprecise hip phrases. Julia Gillard's use of moving forward in the first two days of the election campaign put usage in the hundreds, but slipped away when the cliche was recognised as such.

In non-election weeks, the phrase appears in reporting in Australia about 80 times a...

Cliche of the Week 8 – Heavy Lifting

From sleek corporate corridors to shadowy political backrooms and sweaty sports stadiums, there's always someone doing the heavy lifting, carrying the workload for the benefit of others.

This catch-all cliche appears in the media about 1200 times a week around the world and is applied to many flavours of news: sport, finance, real estate and politics.

On basketball: "(Dwyane) Wade's role in this can't be overstated. He already brought one title to Miami by doing all the heavy lifting, and now h...

Cliche of the Week 7 – Fled the Scene

Armed men rarely calmly walk away from a robbery. They flee.

 "The suspects fled the scene in a dark blue Chevrolet Impala with silver trim on the trunk." (June 4, The Herald, South Carolina)

 Fled the scene is used about 4,000 times a month in crime reporting round the world.

Read the full Cliche of the week report, Villains flee the scene often and everywhere,  in the Australian newspaper.

Police reporting is a rich field for cliches. I was in India last week where newspapers referred to...

Cliche of the Week 6 – Factional Warlords

AUSTRALIAN warlords, unlike their bandit namesakes, use votes rather than bullets to exert power and prefer the backroom to the frontline.

Factional warlords became an often used phrase when Julia Gillard unseated Kevin Rudd.

Before then the phrase surfaced in reporting once a week, not enough to call it a cliche. When it does appear in the media, factional warlords is used more often in Australia than the rest of the world and is associated with Labor infighting.

Read the full report in the...