Cliché finder
Paste your writing to find the stock phrases that sound polished and say very little, like “delve into”, “plays a crucial role” and “a rich history”.
A free tool from Plainhand. Your text never leaves your browser.
What it checks
The finder uses the same list of stock phrases as the full Plainhand editor and highlights every one it finds. The full editor is more forgiving: it only flags a phrase once it appears twice or more, so a single use doesn’t get in your way. Phrases you’ve repeated are underlined and marked “Repeated”, so you can see what the editor would flag too.
Matching ignores capital letters and also catches longer words that contain a phrase, such as “nuanced” for “nuance”.
Why stock phrases weaken writing
A stock phrase is a ready-made unit that stands in for a specific thought. It sounds finished, so it’s easy to reach for, but it leaves the reader with nothing to picture or weigh. Replace it with the particular thing you meant, and the sentence usually gets shorter and more convincing.
Before
The festival plays a crucial role in the town’s rich history.
After
The festival is the one weekend a year when every hotel in town is full.
What to write instead
- Name the specific thing. Ask what the phrase stands for in this sentence, and write that.
- Try cutting it. Phrases like “it’s worth noting” often come out with nothing lost.
- Keep the clearest option. If a familiar phrase really is the plainest way to say it, leave it.
Check everything at once. The full Plainhand editor highlights stock phrases alongside sentence length, filter words, repeated openers and more, with a short note on each. Its checks are free and run in your browser.
Open the full editor