REVISING YOUR DOCUMENT
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graph. In fact, it is difficult to identify any sentence in the paragraph that constitutes a nucleus for the material it contains. “Our lives are shaped by the automobile” sounds as if it should perform this task, but the next part of the paragraph consists of short sentences that read more like separate thoughts placed next to one another, rather than thoughts connected to a central concept. Part of the problem may lie in the type of sentences the writer uses. Applying the sentence questions dispassionately, the writer might well feel that the shorter sentences work best, but that there are possibly too many of them. The longer sentences do not suffer from being too complex; instead, they tend to straggle. For example, “Even if the ordinary person could be persuaded or forced to part with his car, their [there] are all the commercial interests—the companies who make vehicles, the companies who sell them, the companies who drill oil out of the ground, and the countries whose economies depend on oil—who are not going to lie down and watch themselves going bankrupt.” This sentence would surely benefit from being tightened up. The parenthetical phrases between the dashes (the companies . . ., the companies . . .) are intended to emphasize the number and variety of the commercial interests that would be affected, but the same effect could be achieved more neatly: “Even if the ordinary person could be persuaded or forced to part with his [?] car, commercial organizations from vehicle manufacturers to oil companies and even nations would face being bankrupted. They would certainly not let this happen without a fight.” The language that the writer uses is simple and clear, and often vigorous. For example, the replacement sentence “Internal-combustion engines fuel global warming” has considerable punch through playing on the word fuel. However, the piece contains a number of clichés and inappropriate metaphors. A cliché is a fixed phrase that has become overused. Clichés are usually neat, convenient, and superficially attractive phrases. The problem with them is that everyone finds them neat, convenient, and attractive, consequently they have been used over and over again. They are usually dead metaphors. When people use notorious clichés such as “go the extra mile,” not only are they not, literally, going to walk five miles instead of four, but it never even enters their heads that what they are writing or saying has nothing to do with walking or distances. The metaphor is therefore dead. The phrase means no more than that they will make an extra effort. The text under consideration contains several such phrases: “the kiss of death,” for example, or “between a rock and a hard place” or “a great leap forward.” It is very difficult not to use clichés. Even the most experienced writers may use them, if their attention lapses. Conscientious writers, however, ought to be ruthless about striking them from the text at the revision stage. The writer of the example essay may have thought that “kiss of death” followed quite nicely the phrase “kills off the automobile,” and that both brought a touch of racy vigor to the sentence. But if his or her conscience were really active, then “kill off” might, on second thought, seem a rather sloppy verb to use about the automobile, which is in no sense alive. It may seem a harsh judgment, but if “kiss of death” has to go, it is better that “kill off” goes too in order to make way for a new expression, perhaps something