Skip to content

Cliche-finder bookmarklet

Last updated on June 14, 2007

Quinn posted a link to a nifty CGI by Aaron Swartz which detects uses of common cliches, with the list of cliches to avoid taken from the Associated Press Guide to News Writing. In addition, she also mentioned there’s the Passivator, ‘a passive verb and adverb flagger for Mozilla-derived browsers, Safari, and Opera 7.5’.

Combining the two, I’ve hacked together a bookmarklet version of the cliche finder — it can be found on this page. (Couldn’t place it inline into this post due to stupid over-aggressive Markdown, grr.)

Fun! Probably not IE-compatible, though.

10 Comments

  1. I’m all for sore thumbs, but I think it’s nicer without the black border. I’ve posted it, sans border, on my site.

  2. ben

    This is a crime against code.

  3. Aristotle — ok, consider that a non-endorsing link. The last thing I want to do is get embroiled in that passive-voice flame fest ;)

    Thanks Aaron!

    ben — true enough, that’s the world of javascript programming, as you know yourself.

  4. This is probably the most useless script for Firefox but at the same time funnier then majority. It’s simple, ultra cool and playful…

  5. good news, thx

  6. I think this is not a useless script, I tried to find it but had no luck.. thank you for making it free for us… will there be new version of that script which allows to put my predefined Cliches in the database? Thanks, Kirsten

  7. Thanks Aaron! Great work

  8. Is there any way I can get the source code of the script? I have a few ideas how to modify it.

  9. Luka — your browser’s “View Source” should do it ;)

Comments are closed.