Academic papers provide students opportunities to present their thoughts, research and/or findings in a way that best expresses the message they want to convey. Students resort to creative ways to express their opinion and, sometimes, rely on old tricks to write their academic papers.
These ‘old tricks’ are known as cliches. A cliche, as stated by dictionary definitions, is ‘an opinion or phrase that’s overused or unoriginal in thought.’
Students often include cliches in their work as a way to express a common idea, though they don’t realize that cliches don’t help their case. Cliches are known to make a bad impression when used in an academic paper.
They show that a student ‘didn’t bother’ to put any thought into expressing their own ideas. Some resources also mention that cliches have a tendency to make readers skim over sections that may use the cliche, missing out on the entire scope of the student’s academic paper.