Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

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He was a master of rhetoric, as he was a master of mimicry, but his preferred figure of speech was one of the lowest, the pun.

NEWYORKER: Silence, Exile, Punning

Tuesday kicks off (no mere figure of speech, this) with questions (at 2.30pm) to the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, and his smoothly diplomatic deputy, Mark Harper.

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But maybe my saying so is a figure of speech.

NEWYORKER: Lake Water

But Mr Cobbledick, who was formerly the boss of Miss Willis, told the court that because she was angry he took her comment to be a figure of speech.

BBC: Derby fire deaths: Mairead Philpott 'abused by her father'

She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

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This, though, is just a figure of speech.

ECONOMIST: Bagehot

He called it the phonograph, and it took a long time for librarians to figure out that the echoes of speech and music that Edison and his successors etched on discs were as important a part of our collective memory as the words that Johannes Gutenberg and his successors printed on paper.

WSJ: Copyright Protection That Serves to Destroy | Sightings by Terry Teachout

Mr Leshchenko began working for Ukrainska Pravda several days before Gongadze's disappearance but he refuses to be compared to the dead journalist who has become an iconic figure in Ukraine, a symbol of struggle for the freedom of speech.

BBC: NEWS | Europe | Free to mourn the Orange dream