Clichés manage to find their way into our everyday language easily enough, but they're perhaps even more insidious in writing--so much so that certain communities of writers begin to fall prey (Was that a cliché? Yes, I think it was.) to a unique, snippet-filled shorthand.

Look at book reviewers, for instance. An article in the Daily Telegraph (by way of Publisher's Marketplace) takes on the "review-ese" used time and again by book reviewers. Think of all the book jackets you've read. Do the words "vast, sprawling epic" ring a bell? They should; many effusive blurbs have used them as a crutch. How about "emotional rollercoaster"? Maybe a "high-octane" novel that "hits the ground running" and moves at "breakneck speed?"

Just picture yourself regurgitating this kind of stuff to a friend. Friend: "How'd you like that book?" You: "It was a heady cocktail of Thomas Wolfe meets Isaac Asimov." See? It really is clichéd, but you can only get away with it in print.

My favorite passage from the article:

Another (way to summarize a book) is to talk of an author's progeny – he or she could be the bastard offspring, or bizarre lovechild, conceived in a crack house by the union of Marcel Proust and Jeanette Winterson. Yet another is the culinary image: take Tobias Smollett, stew him in his own juice, reduce, mix in some finely chopped Poe, season with Patti Smith and serve with late Henry James.

Go read the article. It's laughoutloud funny.

Admit it: you've dreamed of having your words immortalized, available for all the world to see. What better venue than a bottle of ketchup?

Heinz Ketchup is sponsoring its second annual "Say Something Ketchuppy" contest, with rules that are ever-so-easy to follow: in eight words or less, come up with something witty or clever for the Heinz Ketchup label. Imagine: people from around the United States (if not the world) sitting down with their plates of fries, grabbing the ketchup bottle, and being instantly smitten by your rapier wit.

The Heinz site has full details, along with winning entries from last year--entries ranging from the painfully punny ("Is your flavor falling behind? Ketchup with Heinz") to the downright hilarious ("Easier to spell than Worcestershire") to the ... um ... head-scratch inducing ("Meat dip").