Wire Services: The A.P.’s Cliche Hunt

Haste is the standing excuse of the newsman whose deadline bouts with the typewriter let a cliche or two slip past his careless eye. In an effort to reduce the cliche content of its own copy, the Associated Press, which must cope with haste to a greater degree than most news-gathering agencies, decided to enlist the aid of a computer. From ditors and staff writers all over the U.S., the A.P. assembled a list of 469 hackneyed words and phrases. These were fed into a Univac 1105, along with 375,000 words of wire copy to be sifted for those same cliches.

Topping the list of shopworn journa-ese was the verb “hail,” a pet of head-ine writers (MAYOR HAILS HOMETOWN HERO) as well as reporters (“New Yorkers hailed their first rain in six weeks”). Univac awarded second place to the phrase “violence flared,” third place to “flatly denied.” The rest of the runners-up: “racially troubled,” “voters marched to the polls,” “jampacked,” “usually reliable sources,” “backlash,” “kickoff” (as applied to anything but a football game), “limped into port,” “gutted by fire,—” “death and destruction,” “riot-torn,” “strife-torn,” “tinder-dry woodlands,” “in the wake of,” “no immediate comment,” “guarded optimism,” “-wise” (as in percentage-wise).

In the wake of Univac’s report, the A.P. had no immediate comment. But a usually reliable source hailed with guarded optimism the fact that, percentagewise, the A.P. copy came out relatively cliche-clean. Even the first-place winner, “hail,” was found only nine times among the 375,000 words.