Wire Services: The A.P.'s Cliche Hunt

Haste is the standing excuse of the newsman whose deadline bouts with the typewriter let a cliche or two slip past his careless eye. In an effort to reduce the cliche content of its own copy, the Associated Press, which must cope with haste to a greater degree than most news-gathering agencies, decided to enlist the aid of a computer. From ditors and staff writers all over the U.S., the A.P. assembled a list of 469 hackneyed words and phrases. These were fed into a Univac 1105, along with 375,000 words of wire...