Welcome to the Golden Age of Clichés

A few weeks ago, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, sent an email to the newsroom about clichés. To paraphrase: He wanted us to try harder to avoid them, because nobody comes to the website or the print magazine to be bored and annoyed. Did I think that this email was directed at me, personally, and that it referred to the unacceptable number of clichés in my writing? Well, he included a long list of specific words and phrases to avoid, and several of them looked … familiar. Needless to say, nonsense filler phrases such as needless to say are bound to slip into even not-lazy writing.