There’s a joke my kids are fond of telling about not wanting to read Shakespeare (or the Bible). When challenged, they grin and say that Shakespeare is too unoriginal – almost everything he says is a clich\u00c3\u00a9…. and I have to confess that the first time they did it, I didn’t stop to think before I jumped in, all guns blazing, only to realise a second later how much of a fool I’d just made of myself.<\/p>\n
That said, of course, it is true that your presentations should contain not a single (accidental) clich\u00c3\u00a9 if you can avoid it – they’re all too often sterile noises which don’t actually mean anything. Of course, if you use one for effect, so be it, but please, please, please<\/strong> don’t use them without thinking.<\/p>\n My experience is that a clich\u00c3\u00a9-ridden presentation is likely to be boring in terms of the presentation style and sloppy in terms of content. I’m not suggesting that writing in clich\u00c3\u00a9s means you’re automatically <\/strong>not on top of your subject matter, just that you’ve probably not put the necessary level of thought and effort in……<\/p>\n On the other hand, unfortunately, it’s sometimes quite tricky to spot them as they sneak in. My advice would be to use something like this clich\u00c3\u00a9-spotter<\/a> or – far better – use the services of a professional, such as my friend Suze<\/a>. If all else fails, just practice in front of a friend who you know will pull you up short when you do the dirty and slip into clich\u00c3\u00a9-speak. (And if you’ve never read any of Suze’s work, the best I can say is that she’s a professional writing who’s so good she doesn’t read like a professional writer… if you see what I mean!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s a joke my kids are fond of telling about not wanting to read Shakespeare (or the Bible). When challenged, they grin and say that Shakespeare is too unoriginal – almost everything he says is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}