Time and Again, At the End Of The Day, Whether You Are In The Red Or In The Black, As Long As It Is A Level Playing Field, And You Have A Wealth Of Experience Without An About Face, It’s Time To Get Rid Of The Clichés!

Philip Stone June 15, 2006

The headline above is a classic – don’t lose it. In one headline you have the seven most frequently used clichés by the British and US media. And we’re going to name names and there are some that may surprise you.

Our source is Factiva Insight that sifts through all the six million articles that Factiva adds to its database every month looking for prescribed specific terms. And so for a bit of fun Chris Pash, Factiva’s director of publisher relations based in Sydney, Australia searched on some 55 clichés for the six-month period December, 2005 to May 2006 to discover not only the most used clichés, but he names the guilty too.

Far and away (no, that was not one of the cliché search terms so FTM is quite safe) the most overused cliché was “Time and Again”. In six months in the UK it was used 61,371 times with “At The End Of The Day” falling a distant second with 3,323 uses. In the US  “Time and Again” was used 174,766 times with “At The End Of The Day” again a distant second with 9,879 uses.

In the UK “In The Red” scored third but in the US it was “In the Black” with those clichés swapping positions for fourth place in each country. Rounding out the list for the UK top 10 were “Level Playing Field”, “Wealth of Experience”, “Time Is Running Out”, “Unsung heroes”, “Clean Bill of Health” and “Split Second.”

The US list was similar with  “About Face” and ” and “Outpouring of Support” making the top 10.

In the UK for “Time and Again” the 100 plus Newsquest regional newspapers were the worst offenders, using the expression 4,773 times. But for a single publication the honor goes to The Guardian that used the expression 3,851 times, followed by BBC News Online, 2,066; The Times, 2,052; the Independent, 1,810; and The Daily Telegraph, 1,731. Could it be that the so-called “quality newspapers” need to take a look at the quality of their writing?

For the US, taking the second most abused cliché, “At the End of The Day” the worst newspaper offender was the Washington Post, 144; The New York Times, 136; The Los Angeles Times, 102; The Boston Globe, 97; and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, 76.

National borders do not contain clichés. Although the UK and America are sometimes called similar countries separated by language, their most used clichés are basically the same.

Indeed “Time and Again” comes up the major winner no matter where it is searched. In Australia, for instance, it won hands down with “At the End of the Day” a far away second.

So it is in that same spirit (that wasn’t on the search list either) that the International Herald Tribune scores with the headline of the month on its story of further delays to the Airbus 380: “Stalled at take-off, and other clichés”

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