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As anyone who’s been to one our writing training courses knows, one of the key tenets of good writing is only to use as many words as you need. Check every word and phrase just to make sure it actually adds something to what you’re writing.

There are hundreds of stock phrases that we all use every day that don’t actually mean anything, or that could be expressed more simply and concisely without any loss of meaning.

Here are a couple of classic examples of unnecessary word use we came across recently:

per calendar month – are there any other kinds of month? Lunar month? Celestial month? It’s not like year, where there could be confusion over the financial year or the calendar year. There’s only one kind of month, so drop the calendar.

including but not limited to – by definition, including means not limited to. You don’t need to explicitly state it again. Including means ‘here are a few examples, but there are others’. It is not saying, ‘here is the definitive list and nothing else counts’.

So next time you find yourself reaching for one of those easy, familiar phrases that we all use without even thinking about it, just take a second to check if there’s a better way of saying it.

Here’s one of our favourite word-related quotes. It’s from Albert Einstein of all people. Not just a numbers man after all it seems:

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Sometimes I feel like tattooing this quote onto my forehead when meeting particularly jargon-loving clients. After all, who’s going to argue with Einstein?

Tell it to me straight

The instantaneous ‘as-it-happens’ world of news reporting is an unpredictable place.  Those tickers that run across the bottom of the screen cry out for some real breaking news but most days, it’s pretty dull.

That’s where the poetic licence of the avid reporter comes in handy. When there’s not much going on, you may notice the correspondent likes to fill the air time with vivid descriptions of their surroundings, or recount the previous night’s events with florid similes.

When it comes to the metaphor, it’s now used so much it’s an expected, if sometimes inappropriate, backdrop to any story or news report. The Guardian’s editor recently advised his staff to avoid using military metaphors in political coverage– particularly when there are so many real wars happening outside the UK.

And this style of writing surely blunts any impact when used in its proper context. Are ‘backbench troops’ really ‘on the defensive’?  Your average journalist would be stuck if they couldn’t use descriptive words like ‘war’, ‘battle’ or ‘fight’. Elections are ‘battlegrounds’, there’s wars on drugs, obesity and of course, terror.

However when real news does actually happen, like the recent uprising in Egypt, the metaphor becomes strangely redundant. At first, correspondents clearly enjoyed getting creative, from being ‘engulfed in an ocean of protesters’ to observing ‘the war zone in Cairo’. However, the reality soon caught up with the hyperbole as subsequent events spoke for themselves, and reporters got on with what they do best that is – giving it to us straight.

Followers of this blog will know of our admiration for the Plain English Campaign (PEC). Their mission to rid the corporate world of jargon, important-sounding vacuous waffle and ambiguous confusion is to be admired.

But, with every argument must come a counterpoint, and we discovered one very recently in the Guardian’s word blog ‘mind your language.’

The PEC’s view is that by using metaphors such as ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ and ‘move the goalposts’, is to block clear communication and, as a result, miss the message. The Campaign even quotes George Orwell, and his incisive essay ‘Politics and the English Language’: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print”.

According to the Guardian writer, though, PEC’s mistake was to condemn metaphors in the same way as other over-used cliches such as ‘blue sky thinking’ and ‘ballpark figure’. He says the Campaign’s stance ’betrays a lack of sensitivity to the poetry and evocative power of everyday language’.

To avoid metaphors is to avoid any familiarity for the reader or listener. Newly coined metaphors, he argues, are useful for a fresh insight or idea – but even the most gifted of writers would be hard pushed to come up with many brand new ones.

To use a sprinkling of familiar metaphors in writing or speaking  is to help the reader conjure a vivid picture or inspire thought. The writer mentions Barack Obama’s inauguration speech as a good example.

Ultimately, we’re all on the same team, but the writer’s argument for words is to ‘love them, not distrust them’, to follow the rules of good English but to also use your own  judgement when it comes to using one of the most useful tools a writer has.