Imagine that clichés and mixed metaphors are items of clothing. A cliché would be worn-out cotton pants that you’ve had handed down to you and that you’ve owned for a long time now. Your partner tells you that you should get rid of them. The fabric is thinning and there are holes and no matter how well they’re washed, they kind of smell musty.

A mixed metaphor would be the colourful top that your partner loves to wear paired with a necklace made from delicious homemade spaghetti and meat sauce. Sure, it’s a little messy, but you can still understand what I’m saying, right? You know why I chose this particular ensemble for the formal gala?

I had a short moment of the slightest panic when I realized that in an article like this I would have to come up with examples, but then I realized that I could read almost any piece of prose and easily be supplied.

Here’s a list that I got from a single article written by an editor, for a publishing blog, which I read last month:

• Tying themselves into knots
• Bread crumb
• Knocks us off of our comfortable perch
• Fills in a bit more of the picture one brushstroke at a time
• Trying to put together pieces of this puzzle
• Uncertain of their footing

Just try this test yourself with the next article you read on any topic. My prediction is that you won’t be more than a couple of paragraphs in before the clichés rear their ugly heads (see what I did there?).

Clichés are so prevalent in writing partly just because of the nature of clichés. They are expressions that have been used for decades and often they come easily to your writing when you are trying to make a point. And you know people will understand what you are saying. And they have the added “advantage” that you don’t have to use your own original words and phrasings. These are ready-made. Plug and play.

Mixed metaphors are often the combination of two or more clichés, but not always. Sometimes they are just the combination of two or three images but when you examine the result you find that in the real world we live in, the combination doesn’t make any sense. The reason that writers continue to use mixed metaphors is that they are not really thinking of what the images are, what the picture is that they are drawing, when they use them. They are thinking of the meaning of the image now in English and so, when they want to add another image to complete their thought, they do the same thing (focus on meaning and not image), and the result can be a clash.

Here’s an example of a mixed metaphor that actually uses three images, and I challenge you to draw a picture of what the resultant combination depicts:

• “They’re sister organizations joined at the hip and there’s a lot of cross-fertilization.”

Here you see the appeal of mixed metaphors or at least why people create them and don’t notice how, well, ridiculous they are. Two sisters are joined at the hip (presumably from birth) and the fertilization that’s taking place is anyone’s guess: the sisters are dating two different (unjoined) men and both the sisters and the men are casual about who has sex with whom?

Or this one:

• “This artistic intersection of two singular cinematic visions paves the way for a new category of political art.”

It’s hard to imagine how an intersection can also do paving work. Perhaps it’s an innovation in road-building technology that I’m not aware of?

You get the idea. So the challenge for the editor, in the case of clichés and mixed metaphors, is: what do you do? Both are understandable or decipherable in the sense that the reader can figure out or even quite easily know what the writer is talking about. Why should the editor mess with that?

The answer, at least for me, is that style is important too. My own practice, briefly stated, I advise clients to replace the cliché with a fresh image of their own devising, or to avoid an image outright and just use simple language. For mixed metaphors, I advise that they need to change it somehow. Sometimes they can just keep one of the metaphors and then mix it with another metaphor that makes sense. And sometimes they can, again, just do away with the metaphors and use plain language to make their point.

That’s the short version. In practice, clichés at least are in my opinion on a continuum: some are more offensive to style than others. If my client uses “selling like hotcakes” or “avoid it like the plague,” my strong advice will be to get rid of it. According to the OED, they date from 1839 and 1699, respectively. Those are both stylistically “stinky” by now and could use a fresh-baked replacement.

Other clichés don’t feel so hoary. “Drive me nuts”? I might likely let that go, partly because of its succinctness and its to-the-point-ed-ness. But it’s very subjective of course.

With mixed metaphors, I feel I am doing the writer a favour by pointing it out. They’re not wrong (whatever that means when dealing with language), but they betray a poor if not demented sense of style—the spaghetti with the ball gown.

* Wayne Jones is a retired academic librarian and an active podcast host and editor. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland. You can reach him at NewfoundlandBoy.ca.