"We hang over each other’s heads, more and more heavily, self-appointed swords of Damocles waiting with baited breath to strike."

I'm trying to read "The Decay of Twitter" — an article in The Atlantic critical of the way people write on Twitter — but what about the way people write in The Atlantic? That sentence, quoted above, may be the worst sentence I've read in the last 10 years.

First, what the hell is "baited breath"? Avoid clichés and you won't have this problem, but FYI, it's "bated breath." No one uses the verb "bate" anymore, but it's like "abate." If you have "bated breath," you're holding your breath. If you have "baited breath," maybe you've been eating fish, but it has little to do with acting like a sword hanging over everyone's head.

But a sword of Damocles can't be waiting and looking for things to strike at. The sword of Damocles hangs over the one person who's sitting under it. (So don't sit there!)



The sword has no mind and makes no decision about when to strike. It hangs by a hair and will, when the hair breaks, fall only on the person who's under it. The sword doesn't become progressively heavier, nor does it "appoint' itself.

You shouldn't be using these clichés in the first place, but using them without thinking about what they mean and what images you're creating is atrocious — especially in an article that purports to critique writing.