Even single words can be clichés. All words are created equal, but some words have grown more tired than others. That’s true not only of adjectives like unique or azure but even of certain function words. As, for example. Over the years writers have used as to get more information into their sentences:

“No,” he said, as he leaned back in his red leather chair.

That use of as as a coordinating conjunction between two main clauses looks harmless and certainly is not toxic. But there’s something so familiar in it that it reminds readers of commercial magazine stories. There can’t be anything intrinsically wrong with as used in this way, but look for it in opening sentences of admired, anthologized stories, and you’re not likely to find it. The same thing is true for while:

Fiction writing is less susceptible than journalistic writing to another class of problematic words. These are vogue words that seem to spring into general use and then are heard everywhere. They come from the political bureaucracy, from science (popular psychology especially), and from news events. Soon all sorts of people are assuming postures or networking or defining windows or undergoing devolution or getting in touch with their feelings and so forth. This sort of language can be useful to a fiction writer. If you listen for trends in usage, you can suggest a great deal about a character or a social group through conversation. Then you have recognized the cliché, not succumbed to it. But you need take care—vogue words can date your story as fast as they disappear themselves.

The familiar phrases of conventional fiction signal to readers that the work is going to be as predictable as its prose. For some readers and writers that is a virtue. Jean Kent and Candace Shelton’s The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book is a perversely helpful book. Designed for romance writers, it is filled with suggested phrases like “the thought froze in her brain,” “something clicked in her mind,” and “she shuddered, bristling with indignation.” It suggests descriptions such as “her hips tapered into long straight legs” and “his ruggedly handsome face was vaguely familiar.” For romance readers, that language signals that the book is what they are looking for. But for other readers, those phrases can mean that the work is not going to be fresh, original, and thoughtful. In fact, The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book might be a useful anti-dictionary for writers. Phrases of this sort often simplify reality. They do not describe what is seen but substitute a convention for the observation.