Upon receiving my edits on an academic paper recently, the author—a non-native English speaker—questioned why I had changed “for reason of” to “for reasons of,” when there was only one reason cited in that sentence. It was a reasonable question for which I didn’t have a good answer, except that “for reasons of” is much more commonly used in English and therefore “for reason of” just doesn’t look right. Knowing this explanation would be wholly unsatisfying, I then suggested “because of” as an alternative, which probably is what I should have changed it to in the first place.

What we have here, folks, is an idiom. It’s a phrase that “everyone” (read: most native speakers) knows the meaning of, but which doesn’t make logical sense when parsed on the basis of each word’s literal meaning.

Many idioms are metaphorical in nature, and there is, therefore, a fine line between idioms and clichés, about which I have previously ranted in this space. “A drop in the bucket,” “barking up the wrong tree,” and “going out on a limb” are often classified as idioms, but they depend so much on metaphor for their effect, and are so overused, that they fall firmly (to my way of thinking) into the category of cliché.

Other idioms are less obviously metaphorical, and thus are trickier to understand: “Go for broke,” “high on the hog” (see illustration), “in the altogether,” and “rule of thumb” are some examples. Unlike the metaphorical idioms, which many readers can probably understand without too much trouble, these make no sense at all if you’ve never heard them before. (Some of them make no sense even if you have heard them; I still don’t know what “age before beauty” means.)

“OK, Mr. Smartypants,” I hear you saying. “So what? I  know what they mean, and they are a succinct way to get the point across.”

Quite true, no doubt. But consider my academic author client, who lives and works overseas and who may have learned English by necessity, not by choice. This type of reader will typically struggle with idioms, and may get exactly the wrong idea. (Pity poor Asok, the intern in the “Dilbert” comic strip, who found out too late what “throw him under the bus” really means.)

Whether any of us—writers or readers—like it or not, English has become the language of international business, and is becoming the common language of academe as well. This means that many of your readers will not be native speakers, and will, more than likely, be completely flummoxed by phrases such as “pulling my leg,” “cash cow,” and “elbow grease.”

For this reason, idioms should generally be avoided in business, technical, and academic writing. Another important reason: Idioms are notoriously difficult to translate into other languages. The fact that many professional translators are people for whom English is a second language doubles idioms’ problematic nature.

Avoiding idioms can be tough sometimes; in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, I came this close to using the phrase “double whammy.” The approach to detecting and eliminating idioms is the same as that for clichés: Read your copy! In this case, having a non-native speaker read your copy may help you find idioms you didn’t know were idioms.

One last thing before you fly the coop and hit the ground running: Is there a place for idioms? Of course: In spoken English, idioms are as unavoidable as the jargon of your industry. And they can be explained on the spot to anyone unfamiliar with them, so there is a lower risk of their being misunderstood. If you’re a fiction writer, feel free—but don’t put all your eggs in one basket; you creative types should be able to come up with something on your own and not rely on hackneyed phrases. (I know, I know…this is the last straw.)

Morris Vaughan is a technical writing consultant in Los Angeles, California.