Ah cliché — where would we be without it? No, seriously, where would we be? Sweating over posts because we can’t think of anything clever to say. It’s not that we lack imagination, it’s simply that sometimes there are no words. Thus we fall back on, yes, the tried and true.
Any regular consumer of books, writer of books, reviewer of books, or editor of books will recognize the language that is literary jargon. It is supposed to be shorthand that creates an instant identifier for us. Sadly, astute readers have another view of the whole thing:
laughoutloud, as in laughoutloud funny. – Ohmygod. Come to think of it, reviewese could soon become a completely textable language, with:-) or:-( to indicate whether or not a book is good. At the time of writing, though, reviewese still uses laughoutloud as an adjective rather than an interjection
- Circle of clichés: Tom Payne’s guide to the words that reviewers and publishers love too much
