Free cliché detector. Scans your text for ~150 well-known clichés across business jargon, idioms, metaphors, weasel phrases, romance, and sports.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software
Use the cliché detector when polishing business writing, marketing copy, or persuasive essays. Especially valuable for executive communication where over-familiar phrasing reads as inauthentic.
Cliché detection complements filler-word detection: clichés are over-familiar phrases; fillers are over-used single words. Both surface weak writing.
The cliché detector matches against a curated list of roughly 150 well-known clichés, tagged by category: business jargon, idioms, dead metaphors, weasel phrases, romance, and sports.
Matches are exact and case-insensitive with word-boundary checks, so "tip of the iceberg" matches but "iceberg tip" doesn't.
You can filter categories on/off and supply your own custom list for domain-specific clichés.
No. Some serve as shorthand your audience expects. Use the detector as a flag, not an automatic delete.
Yes — enter comma-separated phrases in the custom field. Useful for domain-specific clichés (industry jargon, brand voice guidelines).
Matching is exact. "At the day's end" won't match "at the end of the day" — the detector catches the canonical form. Add variants via custom.
Input
"At the end of the day, our team really hit it out of the park."
Output
2 clichés detected: "at the end of the day" (weasel), "hit it out of the park" (sports).
Clichés flatten writing and signal lazy thinking. Each match shows the category so you can decide which deserve rewriting.
Detection is exact phrase matching against a curated list, sorted into categories — business jargon, general idiom, dead metaphor, weasel words, romance-genre stock phrases and sports metaphor — which you can switch on and off independently, and extend with your own phrases.
The categories matter because the right threshold differs by context. Sports metaphor in a sales deck is a cliché; in sports writing it is the register. Weasel words are the category worth taking seriously everywhere: "many experts believe", "studies show", "it is widely accepted" are constructions that assert authority without providing any, and they are the group most likely to be hiding a claim you cannot support.
Because this is literal matching, a cliché you have varied slightly will not be caught. "At the end of the day" is on the list; "when all is said and done at the end of things" is not. The list is a net with a known mesh size, not a judgement of freshness.
It equally cannot tell deliberate use from lazy use. A phrase in dialogue, in a quotation, or used ironically matches the same as one written straight. Read the hits in context; the tool is an inventory, and the editorial call stays yours.
% content words vs. function words.
Text analysisVocabulary variety — type‑token ratio.
Text analysisTotal + per‑word syllable counts.
Text analysisHighlight passive sentences in your writing.