There’s a reason you will never read the phrase “rain did not dampen the spirits” in the Business Record. We don’t think much of clichés here in the newsroom (where we have not yet succumbed to the trend to disguise what we do with vague, all-purpose labels like “information center”). The rule – and we make all reporters sign a pledge that they won’t violate it or else they’ll have to do that sight-and-sound story we’ve always talked about on the city sewers – is that reporters only get to use “rain did not dampen the spirits” once in their career, if at all, and they should choose that time judiciously.

Besides proving the writer’s prose is hackneyed and unimaginative, “rain did not dampen the spirits” is an entirely speculative observation. Did anyone ask? Not one dampened spirit when, say a cold, steady rain falls on a 2-mile-long parade through your town, leaving the route littered with thousands of pieces of tissue that once were Dumbo’s ears? Just because people who have to be there stay until the horses bring up the rear doesn’t mean their spirits are bright and they’re sorry when it’s all over.

We also refuse to participate in the national obsession to use the phrase “went missing” to describe circumstances as far-flung a child who vanished to – I swear I heard this recently on a local channel – a car that “went missing.” Is it just me, or does that sound like a scenario Stephen King concocted in “Christine,” in which, as I understand it, a car by that name starts itself up and creates murderous mayhem. Fortunately, there are few occasions when it would even occur to us say something “went missing,” unless we were talking about the disappearing cushion in 401(k) plans.

I read on the Internet (where everything is believable, right?) that use of “went missing” is perfectly acceptable English in Great Britain. Haven’t Americans perverted the language enough? I don’t get it. We hijacked “went missing,” a term that fits easily and naturally into the vernacular of Brits, but sounds ignorant and affected in ours, when we could have stolen “loo,” which would be a pleasant, almost frivolous addition to our daily speech? Just think of the less agreeable words we wouldn’t need.

Even if you accept the etymology of “went missing” and accept it as correct usage, it seems to imply, at least subliminally, intent, as if a person “went to the theater” or “went out to play.” It sounds particularly absurd when the story is about a person believed to have been abducted. Plus, it’s old. I’d say it’s “soooooo last year,” but that’s a cliché.

A friend who got out of the television news business with his vocabulary intact would add the banal “It’s official!” to the list. Those of us who think about such things – and granted we are a small but determined fringe group whose members have been known to climb fast-food marquees to remove errant apostrophes from “cheeseburger’s” when it is clear they possess nothing – wonder, conversely, if the other news developments the commentator shared were unofficial. But mainly, “it’s official” just sounds sophomoric and, well, stupid.

We’re running up toward the biggest cliché of all. Chapter 7 in my upcoming blockbuster book, “Field Guide to Community Journalism,” tells reporters how to politely turn down people who want them to write about the Christmas morning birth of a calf to a cow that was not known to be pregnant, but that had been visited months earlier by a neighbor’s fence-busting bull. True story. Can’t you just predict what they named the calf? Miracle. Even miracles have become such a cliché that we might not recognize a real one. It’s probably just as well. I can hear the newscaster now: “It’s official!”

Beth Dalbey can be reached by e-mail at bethdalbey@bpcdm.com.