Filler Words and Clichés: The Complete List (with Replacements)

Filler isn't a style problem. It's a volume problem — phrases that occupy space in a sentence without adding anything a reader can use. Most of them have a shorter, exact replacement, and swapping them in is the single fastest way to tighten a draft.

This is the reference list behind ReadCalc's filler and cliché finder: 74 filler phrases across seven categories, 263 clichés, and passive-voice detection. Below are the patterns worth learning by heart.

The Seven Kinds of Filler

Throat-clearing openers (16 patterns)

The largest category, and the easiest win. These are the phrases writers use to get moving before the real sentence starts. Almost all of them can simply be deleted — the sentence that follows already says what you mean.

Phrase	Replacement
it is important to note that	delete it
it is worth noting that	delete it
it should be noted that	delete it
it goes without saying that	delete it
it could be argued that	delete it
the fact of the matter is that	delete it
what this means is that	delete it
it would appear that	apparently
it would seem that	apparently

If a phrase tells the reader that what follows is important, cut it. Importance is demonstrated, not announced.

Verbose connectives (12 patterns)

Multi-word joins that a single conjunction handles. These are the most common source of bloat in formal and academic writing.

Phrase	Replacement
due to the fact that	because
in light of the fact that	because
on the grounds that	because
on the basis of	because of
in spite of the fact that	although
despite the fact that	although

Verbose prepositions (8 patterns)

A family of phrases that all mean about. There is no register in which the longer form is better.

Phrase	Replacement
with regard to / with regards to	about
in regard to / in regards to	about
in relation to	about
with respect to	about

Nominalisations (17 patterns)

The second-largest category. A nominalisation takes a perfectly good verb and buries it inside a noun, then needs a weak verb — make, have, conduct, provide — to prop it up. Unpicking them shortens the sentence and puts the action back where it belongs.

Phrase	Replacement
make a decision	decide
have a discussion about	discuss
conduct an investigation	investigate
conduct a review	review

Sign-off bloat (10 patterns)

Email-specific, and worth a separate pass if you write a lot of outreach. These phrases are pure convention — the reader gets no information from any of them.

Phrase	Replacement
please do not hesitate to contact	delete it
should you have any questions	delete it
if you have any questions	delete it
feel free to	delete it
as previously mentioned / as mentioned above	delete it

Time fillers (8 patterns)

Phrase	Replacement
at this point in time / at this point	now
in the near future / in the foreseeable future	soon
at a future date	later
on a daily basis	daily
on a regular basis	regularly

Hedging fillers (3 patterns)

The smallest category, but the one that does most damage to authority. There is a possibility that and there is a chance that both collapse to perhaps. As a matter of fact adds nothing and can go.

Clichés Are a Different Problem

The tool checks against 263 clichés — idioms, business-speak, and stock expressions that have been used so often the reader stops processing them. At the end of the day, moving forward, low-hanging fruit, think outside the box, a perfect storm.

Unlike filler, clichés aren't wrong and they aren't always long. The problem is that they're invisible. A reader who has met a phrase four hundred times doesn't picture anything when they meet it again — which means the sentence passes through without leaving a mark. That's why there's no automatic replacement offered for most of them. The fix is to describe what you actually mean, which only you can do.

Passive Voice Isn't Filler — But It Costs You

The finder flags passive constructions separately, and deliberately so. Passive voice is not an error; there are cases where it's the correct choice, and when to keep it is its own question. But each passive construction adds words and moves the actor out of the subject position, so a draft with a lot of it reads slower even when nothing is technically wrong.

What Bloat Actually Costs

The tool reports a bloat percentage — the share of your word count sitting in filler — with a verdict running from clean to very bloated, plus a words-wasted count and a before/after comparison.

The number matters because length compounds. Every filler phrase you keep pushes the reading time up, and the effect is not neutral: longer sentences are understood less reliably, and the words that made them longer are usually these. Cutting filler is the cheapest available improvement to both length and clarity, which is why it belongs at the front of any word-count reduction pass rather than the end.

It's also the mechanism behind most plain-language guidance. Government and legal style guides don't ban complexity — they ban due to the fact that.

Run It on Your Own Text

Reading a list like this is useful once. Running it against your own draft is useful every time, because the categories you personally overuse are rarely the ones you'd guess.

Paste a piece of your recent writing into the finder. Every match is highlighted inline with a one-click replacement, some marked for deletion rather than substitution, and there's an apply-all if you'd rather take the lot in one pass. Then check the rhythm of what's left with the sentence pacing analyser — cutting filler often leaves a run of short sentences that needs varying, and sentence-level work is the natural second pass.