Ask Mike: A Dark and Stormy Blog
While the sentence isn’t really an example of bad writing, it has come to be the poster phrase for an annual contest sponsored by San Jose State University’s English Department. The contest is to write the most deliberately awful prose. Past winners include this sentence by Jim Guigli of Carmichael, California: Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
One blog on creative writing points out that the phrase “dark and stormy night” isn’t really a “bad sentence” but it is redundant. True enough. Unless you’re at the North Pole, nighttime is always dark, right?
Do you guys have favorite clichés that you can’t resist saying? Do you admonish your friends and family for using them or do you, to use a well-worn cliché, live and let live? Leave me a note below and let me know. Until then, I shall wait with baited breath.
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Well, my mom’s mom always said to her, “I need that like I need another hole in my head!” (to which my mom would reply, “How many holes you got in there?”) The saying seems to have been passed down.
i was just talking about that with friends. my most used clichés are “see what had happened was” and i have a friend who’s get on my nerves so bad she says it at the begging of every sentence “yo yo yo” just kills my nerves
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times”…
“Stop exxagerating!”…or whatever it is you are reminding not to do again..Can’t we do without this little gem of a build up, no one really needs to know that you have told me not to do something repeatedly, yet I insist on doing it anyway.
haha.. I loved this! There is a phrase for everything.. “Tomorrow is a new day.”, “Look on the bright side.”, “If you only knew.”, “When I was your age…”, and the one I do like even though it’s a oldie is the simple, “Treat others they way you want to be treated.” that one is still tried and true and can’ be beat!
Just one more comment on “It was a dark and stormy night”: Madeleine L”Engle used that very sentence to open her fine children’s book “A Wrinkle in Time”. I suspect that she knew exactly what she was doing, and that her tongue was firmly in cheek when she wrote it.
i have a problem with the ‘location cliche’; it goes like: My story begins in a small eastern town, or It all started on a long forgotten farm… you know
My favorite overused phrase is “in the fullness of time.”
Everythinig comes in the fullness of time!
As a child I heard a longer version:
‘Twas a dark and stormy night. Around the fire sat brigands large and brigands small. Their leader said, “Antonio! Arise and tell us a story.” Antonio arose and began:
‘Twas a dark and stormy night…
“If you love her[ him], let her [him] go.”
For some reason, appropriate situations for this phrase keep coming up in my life… and then before I know it, I’m passing along this overused pearl of wisdom to frustrated friends… and I get mad at myself for it. I know better ways to express my opinion, but for some reason, this trite expression always pops into my brain and out of my mouth quicker than any other well-developed, original thought. It’s pretty annoying…
Great article btw…I actually already knew the origin of “It was a dark and stormy night” and about the bad-prose contest, but it’s still really funny…I love language!
Not all nights are dark; what about moonlit nights? Cloud cover and moon phases do have an affect on how ‘dark’ the night is.
I like to use “knitted brow” because once I learned from where it came, I couldn’t stop myself. Shakespeare first coined it and it has now become very common place; I say live and let live.
He doesn’t lead a “duel” life, he leads a “dual” life, and the phrase is “bated breath”, not “baited breath”. Are there any jobs at Yahoo for people who know how to write proper English?
I don’t mind them, but I LOVE original writing…
I like ‘dumb as a doornail’ though. But I don’t even know what a doornail is! DX
It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
How would the person who never loved at all even know what they were missing out on? – And by the way, loved and lost is very painful!
“It was a dark and stormy night,” is the first line of A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle.
I have a very similar relationship with cliches. Too many of them can make writing unreadable (as I quickly learned reading other students’ work in my college creative writing class), but once in a while they catch me off guard.
Some of them are really, at their heart, very good comparisons–true, colorful statements. A bird in the hand really IS worth two in the bush, I realized not long ago. Birds are hard to catch! Anyone who preaches to the choir really IS wasting their time; the choir’s already converted!
Some of them make me giggle. Who puts their foot in their mouth? What weather do we get under? How in the world did we get to a point where hearing these phrases was an everyday occurence?
Thanks for this post!
I do like clichés. I’m one of those people who thinks that if someone else already said it and it fits? Might as well say it.
And it’s “Dead as a Doornail” – doornails being the nails they use to tack the metal bands across doors to keep them together “back in the old days” – though that’s not really a cliché… it’s more of a saying.
A situational cliché is like…
“And he got onto his motorcycle, wind blowing through his hair. He gazed down the long stretch of lonesome highway and for a seemingly endless instant, she thought he would leave right then and there.
‘Regina, I’m a wanderer. I can’t be held down by chains of commitment. I need to be free to see the open road!’
‘Take me with you!’ she cried, and hung on his leather-clad arm, tears running down her cheeks.
‘You know I can’t do that. You are a great girl, but you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. I’ll always remember you!” and with a kiss, he put on his helmet and drove off.”
Now, we’ve all seen this in movies and commercials, right?
cliché.
Yep. Mine is “The whole nine yards”. However, has that colloquialism become a cliche?
Wow, that Guigli sentence is Philip Marlowe gone seriously wrong!
suddenly I feel kinda ignorant..my whole lexicon is litered with cliches…geez louise,thanx man!…joshua
Another great one known is “Once Upon A Time”. Usually it starts in Fairy Tales…It kills…but it boring after a while…don’t you think?
Mike,
Your style of writing is impressive. I can’t help but wonder if you’re somewhat of a writer yourself!? It’s rare these days to see things properly spelled, much less properly punctuated. Thank you for the retinal relief.
The worst cliche I can think of would have to be “Not nary a grunion.” Though it does make me laugh each time I say it aloud. How about “What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?”
While cliches come and go, they leave behind interesting origins that have a story to tell all in their own.
Boy, I hope I never talk in cliches . . .Knock on wood ! ! !
At first i didn’t quite get why a dark and stormy night was redundant. I’ve had writers explain to me it was a dark night because of the hour,the lack of a moon, the cloud cover, the landscape or cityscape, (trees, tall buildings) etc. And someone could convince me it was not a dark night for the contrary of these situations.
I’m sure i could pass right over the occational cliché if it’s used well in the story. It did rain cats and dogs last night. But that’s an idiom.
Doncha just love language?
FYI for fans of purple prose: the Bulwer-Lytton contest winners and other selected entries have been collected and published in at least two volumes: “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night” and “Son of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.” Enjoy!
Yeah one that i hate is “And history was forever changed”. Like after 9/11 some girl in my class wrote that on a big patriotic poster. I hear it all the time and im just like… uh…. you cant change history. History is already made….. ssoo you are dumb… I hate cliches btw.
Another FYI: the point of the Bulwer-Lytton contest has nothing to do with cliches, really. The point is to write the longest, most ornate, most convoluted, grammatically correct, properly punctuated opening sentence to a (bad) novel that you possibly can manage. Some entries manage WELL over a full page in length.
“Can’t resist saying?”
The short list:
Actions speak louder than words.
All bent out of shape.
As the crow flies.
Bass ackwards (or words to that effect).
Better late than never.
Blowing smoke (up my/your a**).
Curiosity killed the cat.
Deal with it.
Don’t know sh*t from shinola.
Eat like a horse.
Fly by the seat of your pants.
Full of hot air.
Glutton for punishment.
Hold your horses.
If the shoe fits, wear it.
Jumped his/her bones.
Keep it down.
Let the cat out of the bag.
More than meets the eye.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
On the back burner.
Pain in the neck (or other body part).
Quit horsing around!
Rhyme or reason.
Spinning your wheels.
Twiddling your thumbs.
Up for grabs.
Variety is the spice of life.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Work your fingers to the bone.
X marks the spot.
You snooze, you loose.
Zigged when he should have zagged.
“It was a dark and stormy night” was also used in the Star Trek episode “The Royale”, season 2, ep.18, as the first line of the book captain Picard reads…
Dark is not locked to the lack of light. It also denote a night that is sinister or evil. Open your mind and reading can open your world.
summer nights are not dark at least where i live (not north pole) and if the moon is up, you can’t call a night dark one.
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other.” I hear this all the time because I work in a bakery. It’s perfectly reasonable to order two of the most popular donut/bagel/cookie types for (insert event here), but people always laugh as if they’re so darn original when they say that to me.
PS – most of the time, when you order a ‘dozen’ baked goods, you get 13. This means I’m going to ask you what the 13th donut/bagel/cookie is. Please don’t give me a blank look – it’s a baker’s dozen, OK?
My parents always said, “I’m sick and tired of…”
well one day I jumped in and said, “Then take an asprin and go to bed.”
I only tried that one once.
My father’s answer to good sportsmanship to blurt out “you show me a GOOD loser, and I’ll show you a LOSER”.
Oh, Dad. I’m getting all fluttery inside.
I seems that humans like shortcuts. We say y’all when we mean all of you. Angela or Angelo becomes Angie, that is what all these phrases have in common. We use a common phrase to say what we mean becaus it holds some truth for us.
I like the public radio program A Way With Words. they cover words and phrases weekly and I find it fascinating.
Mine are
As Easy as Pie (How is pie easy?)
Many Hands Make Light Work (If the work was light, why couldn’t one person do it in the first place?)
There’s No Place Like Home (Yah there is, my friends home)
A Leopard Doesn’t Change it’s Spots (Your right, because it is part of it’s skin)
That Was a Piece of Cake (No it wasn’t because I would have eaten it if there was one)
Obviously I am having fun with this
As Big As Life (How big is life?)
The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself (If we are fearing fear itself, that means we are always fearing something, obviously defeating the purpose of the quote)
Costs a Pretty Penny (It doesn’t matter how pretty that penny was, I’m just glad I didn’t have to spend a nickel)
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (Then how much is a collage worth?)
Bull in a China Shop (Actually scientists have proved that bulls are smart enough to avoid the shelves, therefore defeating the purpose of this, wrong, cliche)
Fall Head Over Heels (Thats got to hurt)
Pushing Up Daises (If they are pushing anything up then they are not dead)
A Sweet Deal (Normally whatever I get in a deal would not taste good)
Fit as a Fiddle (How fit is a fiddle?)
Abandon Ship (Now why would someone name a child Ship?)
As Sara said, not all nights are equally dark, so the phrase is not redundant. The reason the sentence (and the book) is considered (by the contest people) a sample of bad writing is the length for which it runs on: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
Most of us who have participated and bought into a 12 Step program of recovery for some disease or addiction have found that clichés tend to tell us what we are not doing to achieve our goals.
Easy does it,
One day at a time; Live and let live;
think before you act;
pause when agitated.
All these phrases help me not do what I used to do. In my instance it was hide from reality by taking a drink.
That is “How it works”.
Here’s one my sister uses that makes my skin crawl. She says it over and over during a single conversation… “in any event.” Ugh. Stop it! That one bugs me! Another one my mom used to use when were growing up…”I wouldn’t take that for all the tea in China”. And finally her all time favorite when we she was astonished by something… “Well, I’ll be John Brown!” No you’re mom. LOL.
I notice that some earlier comments are mixing up common sayings in their families with cliches. A cliche is phrase that has been used so often (and is mostly true) that it becomes meaningless, for example:
Time Heals All Wounds.
You Can’t Beat A Dead Horse.
Still Waters Run Deep.
You Only Miss The Water When The Well Runs Dry.
Note the difference? These statements are all true – and overused.
“The floggings will continue until moral improves” is my husband’s favorite because he believes he is the boss. A little arrogant if you ask me.
Whenever I was little and I would say “But everyone else is doing it!!” My mom would reply “If everyone else was jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, would YOU jump too??”
i love you like a toothache.
How about:
“nothing tastes as good as….”
or
“nothing is better than….”
or
“he is good for nothing”
So what the heck is “nothing”
AND
“Scratch”
You can back a cake from scratch or
You can build a car from scratch.
That “Scratch” must be amazing stuff.
“You can’t have our cake and eat it too!”
It’s so annoying when my bf tells me that.
Not to beat a dead horse, but it actually isn’t redundant to say a night is dark — some nights are bright with moonlight or perhaps starlight if it’s clear enough. Other nights can be dark because the moon isn’t out, or of course, because it’s stormy.
I know there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube — the redundancy allegation is out — but I don’t think it’s fair to say.
That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
I hate: well I’ll be _________! Unless it’s mike lang saying well i’ll be cow kicked
Ah the all so common cliche…..no pun intended lol. Well I can honestly say that I am as guilty as a sin (haha) when it comes to cliches. My favored ones would have to be, ” I heard that” and ” You can say that again”. My family’s cliche would be, ” When life gives you lemons make lemonade”. Usually my dad’s response whenever we had a complaint about a household chore or his final decision in a dispute.
In writing, especially blogs, I’m tired of reading the adverb “literally”. It permeates speak, which is mostly fine, as the tone of ones voice can be used to indicate the word is emphatic, sarcastic, or opposed to a cliché (“I told him to go jump in a lake and he *literally* did”)
But in writing, it’s nearly always redundant. I’m literally hopping mad (No, you’re not, you’re figuratively hopping mad). This is literally not true (as opposed to metaphorically not true?
Most often the omission of the adverb makes the sentence stronger. I’m hopping mad (bad cliché, but still). I’m mad. This is not true. The emphatic over-use of “literally” is having the effect of doing the opposite of what it’s trying to accomplish: it’s throwing away the meaning instead of elliciting more attention.
Least favorite cliches:
-the cat’s meow
-I’m so hungry I could eat a horse
- time flies when you’re having fun
- driving me to drink
- sitting like bumps on a log
- he’s so vain he doesn’t think his s*** stinks
- driving like a bat out of hell
-she’s so disorganized she’d lose her head if it weren’t screwed on
- six feet under (why not just say “dead?”)
My favorite cliche:
When pigs fly!
Even though it’s a cliche, for some reason I just love that expression. I guess it’s because the thought of pigs flying cracks me up. Also, I love the attitude behind it- I think it’s a great way to let someone know that whatever you’re talking about will never happen.
Without resorting to verbosity or pedantry, does anyone know a non-cliche equivlent to: “To make a long story short . . .”?
My favorite cliche: “safe as a house.”
How safe IS a house, actually?
The one absolutely abhorred was one of my grandmother’s favorites “They won’t buy the cow if you give the milk away free.” I’m not a cow and nothing is ever free!
seems like some of you are confused and should look up the meaning of cliches…
When I say I almost did it my mom would say…
Almost only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes ….
While it is not necessarily a cliche, the phrase “near miss” when referring to a near COLLISION between two airplanes is one of the stupidest uses of the English language ever. Take a moment to analyze the two words.
The late George Carlin did and had an entire routine based on “near miss.”
Well you know what they say… Don’t trust wikipedia.
Did you people not read the article? Half the crap you’re posting isn’t even a cliche.
I have always hated “For shits and giggles”
You can forgive, but you will never forget.
I hate clichés, too, man. Jargon too. Its use shows a lack of imagination in writing, which is about the worst thing you can have.
At the end of the day, the bottom line is, 24/7 (24/7/365 particular bugs me since there aren’t 365 weeks in a year), blog anything, net- anything, i- anything, hard-core, the fact is, make no mistake, etc etc etc. All of these things are, by nature of their over-use, less vivid and gripping than even their mundane equivalents.
One of the advantages of print as a medium is that there’s almost always someone to edit and proofread that can tell you to take all of that crap out and replace it with normal speech.
Also, it bugs the piss out of me when people use ‘literally’ in a figurative sense.
I personally love “I’ll be all over you like a cheap suit”. Brings up wonderful visuals
I love cliches. Don’t bemoan the usage of cliches, rather, think of them as the personal spice of language. I mean..most cliches to me are like putting some English on a billiard ball…they liven it up a bit.
One of my favorites is “well, that’s all she wrote.”
Plenty more fish in the sea.
I wonder if anyone has actually ever been comforted by those words ?
life isnt fair. way over used but true.
i love to use “you snooze you loose!”
especially at the dinner table lol
Your worst humiliation is only someone else’s momentary entertainment… haha priceless
A few that come to mind:
“If ‘If’s’ and ‘but’s’ were candy and nuts we’d all have a Merry Christmas!” (a personal favorite!)
“I don’t know him from Adam” (or)
“I don’t know her from Eve.”
“So good, you’ll slap your mama!”
“The gift that keeps giving.”
“She’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.”
“He’s older than dirt.”
“Tighter than a nun’s *sshole.” **That’s tight!
“Pretty as a picture.”
“I’ll take a raincheck.”
“Easy like Sunday morning”.
“A veritable cornucopia.”
I love to say, “In further news,” a “well worn” expression by news anchors. I’m amazed by it’s ability to transition from a fatal car accident to a bake sale “at the drop of a hat”.
I like the one “believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.” The nice thing about cliches is they do sum up a particular common thought. There always seems to be truth to them, a truth that the large majority of the population agrees with. That’s how they become cliches!
yeah. did you know that “dead ringer” as a term is because when people were buried a long time ago, they would tie a string to their finger before they were buried and the string was attached to a bell. someone would have to stay up all night just to hear if a bell would ring, and then they would find out who was buried alive.
Why would you think that “it was a dark and stormy night” would be a cliche?
Sounds like someone failed the literary expressions course and still landed a job as “somewhat” of a journalist…
By the way, did you notice my use of “somewhat,”
even though it is not a recognized cliche, it is probably closer than what our genious answer guy came up with…
tbc
benny
Favorite cliche is “The world is my oyster.” Why when talking to someone can you not just say speak in laymen’s terms and say I will make of my life the best I can right….But still it is fun to say right.
Regarding the misspellings of dual and baited….
Koodos!!
Never trust a person who can spell a word only one way.
I guess the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night..” evokes a perfect recipe for a good thriller. And of course the setting it creates sets the precedent for the things to come. My favorite cliche is “Once upon a time.. “. I love those folktales and fables I read from various countries.
Drawn irresistably, like a moth to a flame…ummmm–crispy!
The ones that irk me the most are
‘that’s for sure”, “bottom line”, “having said that” and “at the end of the day”
I don’t know if this counts as a cliché, but keep on saying “Actually..” which actually does not mean anything!
By the way, I’m almost quite sure that the spelling isn’t “baited” breath as your link proves, but “bated breath”.. I even checked my Oxford dictionary. And is it a “duel” life or “dual”??
Who can forge tthe most notible of all “Once upon a time…” You just gotta love ‘em. <3
Wow, Mike, for once a blog that’s not boring and cliche. You’re making progress. Next, tell yahoo answers to stop censoring all questions that bear the slightest semblance of controversy, and we’ll be on the way to this site actually being worth a visit.
a dark and stormy night is not redundant. it is a perfect description of a dark and stormy night.
next time the weather is calm, and there is a full moon, look at how much light there is. add snow on the ground, and you almost have daylight.
when it is stormy, the wind blows, leaves fly by, etc.
a dark and stormy night means, it is very dark because the storm has blocked out the moon and stars.
the book you are referring to was an example of bad writing because of the ENTIRE first line, not “it was a dark and stormy night”.
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
I am absolutely sick of “in terms of”. “In terms of the weather”, “In terms of politics”, “In terms of this” and “In terms of that”, I am just sick of “In terms of anything.!”
Actually Large Marge came up with that line.. It was a dark and stormy night… remember.. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure?
Have you ever considered the BIRTH of a cliche?
Think about it–cliches don’t just show up as expressions so overused that they’re trite.
Therefore, when such are born, they must be fairly witty or with something else to recommend them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t become cliches.
Perhaps, in some weird way, phrases or words become hackneyed is because they were, orignally, so very GOOD!
How about
Another day- another dollar,,
Actually, Madeline L’Engle used “It was a dark and stormy night” as the first line of “A Wrinkle in Time” — and she won a Newberry for it!
I’ve never posted to a blog before, but can’t resist a response to what was said above re the phrase “dark and stormy night” being redundant. Mike says, “Unless you’re at the North Pole, nighttime is always dark, right?”
That is actually not true at all. The night time space can have many qualities of darkness or brightness. I have always marveled how when there is a full moon on a cloudless night, I may actually start looking around to see if they have added new street lamps. And if you add these same elements of full moon and cloudless sky to a layer of new fallen snow on the ground, the lightness and brightness can be amazing. Aside from cliches, I find myself thinking some nights, with heavy cloud cover and only a thin crescent of a moon, how dark the night is. A “dark night” is the kind where I fumble for my keys and stumble over that curbstone I didn’t see. As I grown older, and eyesight less flexible, I appreciate even more the “bright night” as opposed to the “dark night”.
There are some people who I like to think of as being able to.. “Tell you to go to hell and make you look forward to the trip” Also when some is trying to make you feel guilty is.. “Wait while I pack my bags for the trip” or a variation of sorts.
This is great! You did a lot of research and it payed off.
One of my favorite cliches is “To be or not to be, that is the question” and all of it’s parodies.
Dual life, not duel. Bated breath, not bated.
Interesting article!
Don’t like it , don’t do it!
I have to take issue with the statement that ‘A dark and stormy night” is redundant. I have seen many stormy nights that were not dark. Not only were there vast quantities of sheet lighting but there was a full moon. So a “dark night” is not redundant but a clarification.
To me the cliché is not the words per sé but the beginning of a story with the phrase. Nor is it due so much to repetition as a loathing for some reason by the literati for the expression. To them it is the introduction of trite and mundane popular fiction. This, of course, is not necessarily the case.
Slower than smoke off of a Christmas Turkey,is one my Dad always used! Live and let live was the name he chose for a little country store he had many years ago! I always say that someone that don’t have a clue,is > A few Fries short of a Happy Meal! And the list goes on! lol
When I was growing up, long before 1965, my Dad used to tell the kids a story, which went:
“It was a dark and stormy night, and the men sat huddled around the campfire. And the sergeant said, “Antonio, tell us a story,” and Antonio, he began:
“‘It was a dark and stormy night, and the men sat huddled around the campfire. And the sergeant said, ‘Antonio, tell us a story,’ and Antonio, he began:
“‘”It was a dark and stormy night . . .”‘” [etc.]
Based on that, I tend to think that the phrase remained part of popular culture wel before Snoopy picked it up.
how get to another country?
This reminded me of a story I read somewhere a while ago, which began with:
It was a dark and stormy night. Ok, it was actually a cloudless morning, I’ve just always wanted to write that.
My family loved cliches, but their vocabulary was limited and rude. They favored statements like “it was colder than a well-digger’s a@@ in January.” So, I will stop there before someone has to violate my comments.
The word “cliche” itself is a cliche!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
PRIME.
For All intents and purposes…
How about cliches that have been reworked. You say you wait with ‘baited breath’ to hear from us. I had someone many years ago who would have instead said, “I wait with “worm on tongue’!” It took me a few minutes to figure out what he was talking about the first time! Now, if I ever hear or read the cliche ‘baited breath’, I instantly think of ‘worm on tongue’.
Well said.
Worm on Tonque was a quote by “Mork from Ork”