It’s also a thought that many businesses could learn from. Take a selection of organisations and wander around their websites. Read their brochures and their case studies and even have a look around their buildings. Words. Everywhere. Sometimes on the walls. Lots of the same, unsurprising words hanging about like boring guests at a party. So many words: so little to say.

“Engagement”, “stakeholders”, “sustainability”, “passionate”, “delivery”, “value”, “commitment”, “vision”, “empowerment”, “benchmark”, “collaborative”, “innovation”, “performance”, “challenging”, “leadership”. To concoct your own corporate rhetoric, simply take a handful, season with a few pronouns, conjunctions and definite and indefinite articles. Stir and leave to stagnate.

In the truest sense of ‘cliché’, these words are worn out. They may have once been bold and spiky but their power has been diminished by overuse. And when something is overfamiliar and bland, we ignore it, like lift music. If a written word neither commands our attention, nor conveys meaning, it’s pointless. It’s just a black squiggle.

This is about more than keeping language fresh and interesting. It’s about remembering that actions speak louder than words. Putting platitudes and clichés on walls and websites is a placebo: it feels like we’re changing the world when we aren’t. We become content with saying and not doing. Worse than that, we’re not even saying anything of value. When we surround ourselves with cant and cliché, we’re surrounding ourselves with moribund ideas. It’s a form of intellectual laziness that George Orwell brilliantly observed in his 1946 essay, Politics and The English Language: “…the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Imagine I’m in Costa and I ask for a coffee with hot milk. The chances are that my coffee hasn’t yet been made. I may even pay for it before it’s been manufactured and placed in my grateful little mitt. I asked for a coffee. I didn’t pre-ask for it. I ordered it and there wasn’t anything particularly ‘pre’ about it. How is it any different for a book that isn’t yet ready to be sent to me or an album that isn’t yet ready to download? All that matters to me is when I’m going to get it.

There are other abuses of this poor little prefix that upset me even more than pre-ordered. ‘Pre-warn’ and ‘Pre-plan’, for example. How can you warn or plan unless it’s ‘before’? The only way I can pre-warn someone is to say: “I’d like to warn you that I will warn you that a rabbit is about to eat your sandwiches.” I can’t think of a scenario where ‘pre-plan’ would make any sense.

With ‘warn’ and ‘plan’, adding ‘pre’ is pointless. It’s a waste of three perfectly decent letters that could be busy doing something useful somewhere else. And ‘Pre-recorded’? How can you ‘pre-record’ anything? If something’s been recorded, it must have happened in the past. A radio programme that isn’t live wasn’t ‘pre-recorded’. It was just recorded. And then it was broadcast. Until Apple invents the iTimeTravel, we can’t record things from the future. Preposterous.

“Dear Miss Eden…” All fine so far. Brownie points for calling me “Miss.” I am often called “Mrs” Eden and this gets my goat. My mum is Mrs Eden.

“Thank you for your enquiry.” Well, it has gone beyond an enquiry. This is something I want to do, but okay. Pretty standard fare in a letter from a bank.

“We have no objections to you….” Whoa! What?! You have no objections to me paying back money I have borrowed. No objections?! Well, that’s big of you. That’s put me in my place. And it reveals a lot about how you see our relationship. You are big and I am small. You are in control and I need your permission. Do you have another letter you send to other customers saying, “We do object to you paying your mortgage back. We’d really prefer you to stay in debt for as long as possible. That way we make more money.” Am I wrong in thinking that the whole point of a mortgage is that I need to give the money back?

Take a lesson from retailers. I can’t imagine going for my morning coffee and being told, “We have no objection to you buying this coffee…” In fact, when I took out my mortgage with you, you sent me a letter saying, “I would like to take this opportunity of welcoming you as a new customer…” You didn’t say, “We have no objections to you being a customer…”

Well, bank that shall be nameless, you’ve changed your tune, and I object. Your choice of words have made me think twice about you. You had an opportunity to choose your words with care and to build our relationship, to make me think well of your brand. This could be a case of careless words costing you a customer.

Never mind the fact that it’s a legal-sounding warning addressed to young children (and when was the last time you heard a child say “Please accompany me”?) Never mind the implication that it’s possible for someone to be ‘a guardian over the age of 18’ without being ‘an adult’. No, the point here is what this sign is encouraging you to do. The action it would prefer the reader to take is NOT to enter the play area. It actually starts by saying you can’t – ‘No entry’.

Presumably, they do want children to play on it. Presumably what they meant to say is ‘When you play here you have to have an adult with you’. Or perhaps a cooler ‘Children must be accompanied by an adult’. But they’ve ended up using very negative language to talk about a positive experience.

We often find companies using this kind of unnecessarily negative language when they write to customers.

The application form for insurance that says ‘Failure to return this form by 1st June will invalidate the application’, focuses on the miserable scenario in which you don’t apply. It’s like putting up a sign to tell you all about the idea of not applying. It could easily talk instead about the joyful scenario in which you do apply: ‘To make sure your application is valid, please return this form by 1st June.’

The pensions brochure that begins by telling you that ‘retirement can be a real worry – how will you pay the bills?’ is hardly inviting you to read on. It’s like putting up a sign saying ‘Retirement area – do not enter’. Can’t retiring be something to look forward to? Isn’t it the playground we long for after a lifetime of work? It can be, if we talk about it in the right way.

Of course, we don’t have to explain to a child that playing is fun. So if a child wants to play in a play area, a notice at the entrance that starts ‘No entry’ probably won’t put them off. But starting a pension plan is not fun. Neither is applying for insurance. Unlike the enthusiastic child who can’t wait to get on the climbing frame, it doesn’t take much to turn a customer away from a product they weren’t that keen on in the first place.