Two more awful cliches now. The first of these miserable, hackneyed phrases, worked to death years ago now, is “going forward”. What’s disappointing for me is that everyone says it, even people you’d expect to employ a little more originality in their prose.
When you project something into the future there are plenty of satisfying, even beautiful, ways of describing the process, from the simple “from now on” to something a little more interesting, such as “after today” or “in the future”.
Even “moving on from that” sounds better. “Going forward” is simply stating the painfully obvious – that time moves from the past into the future.
How would the marriage vows sound if they read “. . . to have and to hold, going forward; for better, for worse, . . .”. Point made, I think.
Now for “draw a line under”. This is the current modish phrase that people say when they mean “put that behind us”. That’s what we do after an unpleasant experience – learn what we can from it but then place it firmly in the past, where it belongs.
We don’t “draw a line under” it. What is “draw a line under” supposed to mean, anyway? Just drawing a line under it could mean to emphasise it, which is not the intention of anyone using the unfortunate phrase.
So let’s avoid each of these unimaginative cliches and strive for more creative ways of expressing ourselves in the English language, a language that’s rich and varied enough for all of us to convey our thoughts without boring anyone else.
Philip Gegan
