Two Clichés to Cut

Keeping clichés out of your writing is not easy. I’m sure that my hasty blog posts are peppered with the pesky things. So I ought to be more generous than I feel towards writers whose wheels slip into the ruts; but at least I keep my tsk-tsks to myself. Nearly always. Except today — when I want to carp about two phrases that have fallen into use. And use. And use.

The two candidates for exile from the language are “send a message” and “going forward” in all their variations.

As do all clichés, I suppose, these hackneyed phrases create the impression of meaning without actually saying anything very significant. Take, for example, “going forward” (as in this statement by a lawyer quoted in today’s Globe and Mail: “[I]f you don’t meet the grandfathering criteria you’re not going to get any growth going forward because your pension is frozen as of that date…”); nearly all of the time you could — and should — omit it; other parts of the sentence do the work for you, making it clear that you’re talking about the future. Thus, in the sentence just quoted, when else could growth take place than in the future? The point of adding “going forward,” if there is one, seems to be the desire to stroke the reader with anodyne reassurance that things will indeed continue or will improve because “forward” is better somehow than “backward” or “static.”

I think “send a message” set my teeth on edge when George Bush and his belligerent buddies began using it as their idea of a thinking person’s fist shaking. But, though it does appear to have its main use in situations of aggressive posturing, the “message” that gets “sent” can be benign, as in “Saudi Arabia … called the gathering Sunday to send a message that it, too, is concerned by high oil prices inflicting economic pain worldwide.” from this week’s Globe and Mail. The odd thing is that in this age of increased, not to say febrile, communication, too many folks act as though only one vapid phrase can capture their thoughts directed at others.

Lawyers and judges aren’t immune, of course. Why should they be? CanLii finds 553 instances of judgments where the phrase “send(s) a message” was used and 2217 instances of “going forward,” some of which might be non-clichéd uses but the ones I checked fell within my hate zone (e.g. “This was not an acceptable scenario for the McIntyre brothers on a going forward basis…”).

Usage rants accomplish little, I understand, and so I won’t go on. And on. I feel better, though. And maybe — just maybe — I’ll nudge some folks away from these phrases. At least that’s the message that I hope I’ve sent on a going forward basis.