How To Use Formulaic In A Sentence

They contain a good deal of material of a rhetorical, formulaic, or supernatural character designed to bolster the Chosen One's claims to prophethood in the face of sceptical or prejudiced critics.
But the narrative remains strange and poetic enough for it never to appear formulaic or didactic.
It may be based on true events but its feel-good intentions often feel formulaic and it sometimes seems to lack the courage of its convictions.
Both genres, so formulaic, overdetermined by clichés and stereotypes, are eminently accessible for parody.
Some comprimario and secondo roles were doubled up: Vladimir Hristov was both a George Clooney-suave Marchese d'Obigny and a bland Dr. Grenvil; Giorgio Dinev, previously seen enjoyably blustering as Tosca's Spoletta, doddered formulaically as Violetta's servant, but had mischevious sparkle as Gastone — having introduced his friend Alfredo to Violetta, he worked the room, pointing out his handiwork to the other guests, a proud yenta. Pretty Woman

Some comprimario and secondo roles were doubled up: Vladimir Hristov was both a George Clooney-suave Marchese d'Obigny and a bland Dr. Grenvil; Giorgio Dinev, previously seen enjoyably blustering as Tosca's Spoletta, doddered formulaically as Violetta's servant, but had mischevious sparkle as Gastone — having introduced his friend Alfredo to Violetta, he worked the room, pointing out his handiwork to the other guests, a proud yenta. Archive 2008-03-01
Everything else in the novel slavishly follows a simple formulaic adventure plot.
And then you realise that it's formulaic, predictable - and still almost to the point of perfection.
What starts out as a formulaic high school love story of opposites attracting abruptly changes into a maudlin tear-jerker.
You want an urban flat, but don't want a formulaic development with identikit kitchens and bathrooms, boring layouts and drab fittings?
And we want to make this worse by further entrenching the formulaic standards of education?
As a result, Homer often needs four different formulaic phrases for each hero in order to fill each of the pauses indicated above.
The character traits, situations, and dialogue feel formulaic and worn out from overuse.
He offers no formulaic prescription in this book.
Instead of being enchanted, we inevitably become disenchanted with programming which only offers a choice between formulaic sitcoms or worthless docusoaps.
Rising above a formulaic plot device of mentor and novice, both stars give solid and authentic performances. Times, Sunday Times
A formulaic approach to application of the rule would be mistaken.
Proclaiming he wants to be a screenwriter too, Donald starts to pen the kind of formulaic thriller that runs against the very principles Charlie's work is built on.
Most simply regurgitate the same old reductive, formulaic information.
But the only surprise here is in the formulaic plotting and the weirdly reactionary politics. Times, Sunday Times
Another feature of the cartoon that has been overtly spoofed over the years is the formulaic unfolding of the plot.
The light is dependent upon the confluence of sunrise, wind, cloud and quality of air, and these ingredients do not lend themselves to a formulaic recipe.
Carson's topical jokes showed a barometric sensitivity to shifts in the national mood -- when his monologues made Richard Nixon their butt, that was the ball game -- but equally important was the host's carefully crafted casualness and the show's changelessness: The New York Times's Frank Rich called it "as formulaic and reassuring as Kabuki. JOHNNY CARSON, 1925-2005
My ice creams, like the smoked bacon with pain perdu, are formulaically created to get the right levels of solids in them to stop crystallisation.
From The Atlantic's Fiction Issue: Imbued with the righteous moral fervor of a revolutionary, the negativist -to introduce a new literary type- is more pesuasive than the encomiast, who tends to resort to the bland formulaic language of praise. Take THAT Mr McSweegee
Seldom used in ordinary writing, brace or curly brackets are common in mathematics and other formulaic usage, where they serve to enclose complex sets of symbols.
Some comprimario and secondo roles were doubled up: Vladimir Hristov was both a George Clooney-suave Marchese d'Obigny and a bland Dr. Grenvil; Giorgio Dinev, previously seen enjoyably blustering as Tosca's Spoletta, doddered formulaically as Violetta's servant, but had mischevious sparkle as Gastone — having introduced his friend Alfredo to Violetta, he worked the room, pointing out his handiwork to the other guests, a proud yenta. Pretty Woman
And finally, formulaically, she invokes that neighborly, over-the-fence standard ‘common sense’ to pit us against those wacky liberal intellectuals.
Smart, dark paranormal romance would be such a treat compared to the typical formulaic Harlequin tripe in a monster costume. "As if I had a choice...oh well."
The volume is a thorough but ultimately formulaic treatment of a subject handled in several previous books.
The story, that of a widower and a widow connecting with the help of their handyman, is pretty formulaic, and the characters are extremely two-dimensional, but I really liked the descriptions of the houses and the main character’s yacht. Miracle
His pictorial language is formulaic. The Times Literary Supplement
Such a user might find it efficient to be able to refer to formulaic phrases by code or abbreviation without even viewing the display.
The casual, almost formulaic, reference to the fact that this was Galba's second consulship certainly prompts a reader to wonder about his first.
Second, the use of this phenomenon in a formulaic manner by artists to separate forms.
Set in the inner city of 1960's Cleveland, the script follows a formulaic plot.
It begins with one of your formulaic openings as an empathetic reporter gazes into the harrowed souls of old Diggers revisiting the Kokoda trail.
Indeed, this formulaic, strategic intermingling of text and image accentuates the use of the seated dynasts as so many redeployed archaic motifs.
Children love jokes and riddles that are heavily formulaic.
Bardic verse was part of an oral tradition defined by strict metrical patterns, combining original narrative with stock formulaic phrases, elaborate similes and extended digressions.
There's also something formulaic about the way in which each character's problems represent a different political issue. Times, Sunday Times
Given the theme of Yotsuba, “Enjoy Everything”, I think it being a little formulaic is be expected. *Yotsuba&! Book 8 — Recommended » Manga Worth Reading
Probably all this angst about formula and being formulaic is merely shorthand for what J.T. said above. Formula for Disaster
Almost all of these films have the same formulaic plot. Christianity Today
Formulaic expressions account for the stylization of legal language, and thus constitute an obstacle to students who major in Legal English or Business English.
Similarly, the later ones become more elaborate in style, while the early poems were written in a simple, formulaic style of great dramatic force.
That sense of betrayal begins when skepticism gives way to certainty, when possibilities congeal into formulaic ideology. Robert Teitelman: Michael Hirsh's "Capital Offense"
A formulaic approach would, though, mean fewer cases in court. Times, Sunday Times
The stanza is written like the formulaic examples of wit and allusion in old-fashioned riddle books.
You know, in today's business, everything is so cookie cutter and so formulaic, for a rube like Billy to hit like he has is a great thing.
The grammar of the Tamil film song is almost formulaically strict.
Language on such ceremonial occasions is supposed to be formulaic.
One important component of successful language learning is the mastery of idiomatic forms of expression, including idioms, collocations, and sentence frames (collectively referred to here as formulaic sequences).
These were probably formulaic, and he was able to tinker with his regular format to suit.
Up until now, I've never been that impressed with her- a bit formulaic, a bit also-ran - but with her latest single, she has served up a stormer.
If only the script was less formulaic... but then that's the nature of the beast. Times, Sunday Times
Anglo Saxon poetry is formulaic.
I knew it was different to the usual formulaic melodic guitars they adopted (with great success I might add) for their first three albums, but wow!
Test cricket brings drama in a less formulaic way. Times, Sunday Times
The stern and formulaic rules of American news reporting make scepticism difficult to express.
A solid premise and strong performances from the eye-catching cast are spoilt by a formulaic approach. Times, Sunday Times
In the later scenes, it grows more formulaic, galloping towards a happy ending with unseemly haste, burdening the actors with unconvincing old age make-up and testing the audience with corny platitudes.
An A-list cast do their best with B-movie dialogue and a formulaic plot. The Sun
The subject too tends to be rendered in a formulaic way with the figure positioned centrally or slightly to one side within a rocky hollow or outcrop.
The movie is occasionally trite, often formulaic, and frequently familiar.
A formulaic plot, predictable storyline, and a slow beginning hurt what in some places is a nice suspense thriller.
The classic BBC heroine, all eyeliner, open-mothed screams and twisted ankles, was becoming formulaic. Quote o’ the day: life lessons from The Avengers « raincoaster
Her journey to an implausibly remote and impenetrable part of Wales, presided over by a strange and dangerous cult, is pacey and exhilarating enough, if a tad formulaic. Crime roundup – reviews
The plot is ridiculous, but hilarious and the movie is put together formulaically. Movie Reviews: Summer Splash | Heretical Ideas Magazine
It is worthwhile pausing momentarily to consider these linguistic ready-mades, these formulaic sentiments.
So if we do not do something to extend retirement age, if we do not do something formulaically in terms of the top end or the top tier of income earners, you're not going to have this program. The Party of Yes and No
The story could easily have run adrift in formulaic silliness. Mistaken identity turns this 'Date Night' into madcap romp
As the vast majority of his work was formulaic, this method saved a great deal of donkey work, while at the same time, it served as theory exercises for his pupils.
Then again it was the age of the horribly trite, formulaic action movie, so it was largely a sign of the times.
It was an impressive spectacle, if rather formulaic. Times, Sunday Times
The gameplay can be a little formulaic and predictable at times, but it's still brilliant fun and completely addictive. Times, Sunday Times
To build quickly or formulaically generally entails the debasement of materials, with a resulting sensory impoverishment.
This would not imply that all of the many thousands of formulaic expressions would be expressly taught.
Such a formulaic approach to stock picking has a distinctly patchy record. Times, Sunday Times
She dressed in her sterile-looking laboratory gown, formulaically announcing her rank as leading scientist in IHIS.
It's stale, unoriginal, formulaic, repetitive, and shows as much originality and passion as a tribute band.
This uplifting track plays around with the dubstep genre and avoids sounding formulaic. The Sun
The title's just an excuse to make a bad movie that pretends to be a spoof when it's just a rehash of the most formulaic rubbish imaginable.
But the narrative remains strange and poetic enough for it never to appear formulaic or didactic.
With its formulaic plot of intrigue and power struggles, the current drama at Scottish Screen has been a source of much fascination for the Scottish press.
It strikes me that this approach is actually entirely antithetical to the use of fantasy in formulaic writing so, as a sort of inversion of it, I’ve coined the phrase Symbolic Formulation. A Modernist Prometheus
Some attitudes and programmes, it may be argued, are being adopted formulaically without examination of their implications. Times, Sunday Times
The only disappointments are the two stifled and formulaic physique shots of young men in posing pouches.
Watching Zohan serve in the neighborhood watch, cut his teeth as a beautician and bang senior citizens is the best part of the film, which formulaically is about 15 minutes into the movie and about 20 minutes from the end. Kevin's Review: You Don't Mess with the Zohan - Zohan's Crotch, That Is « FirstShowing.net
The text was dull and formulaic.
Previously you implied that the "Theory of Evolution" (your capitals, though whether that's the old standby RM-NS or something else just as blindly formulaic is not explained) is capable "of generating the complexity and diversity we observe in life. Beckwith on ID
The 21st century demands free-thinkers, not an endless parade of automatons churned out from a formulaic educational assembly line.
The disturbing thing is, they aren't even really trying here, and you can tell they're already dogging it a bit in favor of dull, formulaic jazzy folk that would later be their poison.
Unswayed, the manager thanks him formulaically for applying. Andy Kroll: Unemployed: Stranded on the Sidelines of a Jobs Crisis
They did look at affordability, but not in such a formulaic way. Times, Sunday Times
Some comprimario and secondo roles were doubled up: Vladimir Hristov was both a George Clooney-suave Marchese d'Obigny and a bland Dr. Grenvil; Giorgio Dinev, previously seen enjoyably blustering as Tosca's Spoletta, doddered formulaically as Violetta's servant, but had mischevious sparkle as Gastone — having introduced his friend Alfredo to Violetta, he worked the room, pointing out his handiwork to the other guests, a proud yenta. Pretty Woman
A formulaic, unimaginative plot is firmly in place in which every perspective twist can be predicted well in advance.
The genre has certain formulaic elements, tried and tested in their saleability.
Here the secret of American hegemony has lain rather in formulaic abstraction, the basis for the fortune of Hollywood.
This was no exception, but the film itself tends toward the formulaic and Bening’s overacting is insufferable (akin to the more recent film where she played a stage actress and inexplicably got an Oscar nomination). Weekly Mishmash: November 15-21 : Scrubbles.net
I even quite like the ostentatiously distressed trestles and folding chairs they use outside, and the formulaic battered club chairs in the window.
You don't want it to become formulaic, and you don't want it to become predictable in any way.
Because inscriptions tend to be formulaic, deviations from the standard pattern are likely meaningful.
These types of self-congratulatory remarks are commonplace and formulaic.
Why not replace formulaic desserts like cheesecake with additional fresh choices like their praline parfait?
Just as the appearance of the daemonless boy near the end of The Golden Compass wouldn't carry nearly so much horror if we hadn't been so entrenched in daemon-hood up until that point, I think that the formulaic content of the first six Snicket books - a major point of criticism - is absolutely essential to the disorienting effect of watching the formula, bit by bit, dissolve in later books. A Series of Unfortunate Events
A solid premise and strong performances from the eye-catching cast are spoilt by a formulaic approach. Times, Sunday Times
Even the most adventurous Mozart symphony is still at least as structurally formulaic as an Indiana Jones movie, and often much more so. Archive 2008-06-01
By using the same generic convention — the recipe — to mock formulaic fiction that seemingly "blunted" the mind, reviewers also created a new generic technology that was as manufactured as its target. Haunted Britain in the 1970s
A conventional. formulaic oversimplified conception. opinion. or image.
In a landmark 1970s study, Paul Ehrlich and others described the relationship formulaically as IPAT Impact = Population × Affluence × Technology; see www.stirpat.org. When a Billion Chinese Jump
The similarities may be due to scribal reference to the earlier confession or to Issobel herself echoing her previous account, which could have been well established and somewhat formulaic.
But the only surprise here is in the formulaic plotting and the weirdly reactionary politics. Times, Sunday Times
Most obviously, the script is trite and formulaic, attempting to deal with one main hot internet issue within each episode.
Individually and together, they are making a stand against formulaic entertainment.
Imbued with the righteous moral fervor of a revolutionary, the negativist — to introduce a new literary type — is more persuasive than the encomiast, who tends to resort to the bland, formulaic language of praise. James Atlas on Disparagement
Why not replace formulaic desserts like cheesecake with additional fresh choices like their praline parfait?
Youngsters today don't know what hasn't hit them with their identikit formulaic manufactured ‘stars’.
Formulaic expressions are formulaic, precisely because of their fixed form.
Well, sure, cliched and formulaic is pretty standard for disaster movies generally.
It's macho and formulaic, but rather enjoyable nonetheless. Times, Sunday Times
The whole thing must be so formulaic, so routine, it's probably hard to even pretend to be enjoying it after a while.
Five Bloody Graves is in many ways a straightforward and formulaic Western, a departure for Adamson, who usually directed horror flicks. Five Bloody Graves / Nurse Sherri (DVD Review) « Skid Roche
A conventional, formulaic and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.
In terms of drama, you could pitch the show in a sentence, so formulaic are its plots and obvious its tropes. Times, Sunday Times
The film moves quite easily from bittersweet tones to feelgood larkiness, in jaunty but formulaic style. Times, Sunday Times
The surfeit of what became known as the formulaic Full Monty effect eventually inured audiences to the charms of hard knocks/happy future comedies, but Thestar.com - Home Page
I am baffled by the difference between the formulaically charismatic man I met in public, outside of the house and the uninterested, pathetic and almost sinister figure before me.
Secular anthropologists find a pagan influence, reading the formulaic invective as a counters-spell by someone who thinks he is bewitched by sorcerers who "have compassed me about with words of hatred. David Van Biema: Bad News Psalms
Allow one honest sentence to emerge from all this feeble, formulaic footling.
The album tends to be fairly formulaic in parts, though never really to the point of being unenjoyable.
Its language seemed formulaic and false, a screen of clichés and convenient fictions.
Barth's blurb is dutifully included on the back cover of Michael Martone, an example of this book's playful charm but also clear enough warning that we should indeed take the blurb as a formulaic "genre" that ought not to be taken seriously as literary criticism. Writing and Publishing
To summarise is to condemn it as trite and formulaic.
Laboured and formulaic, he responded lamely to the early questions by immediately conceding to MPs from all sides of the House just how important was the point they were raising.
What starts out as a fun way of looking at a story ends as a reductively formulaic approach. Times, Sunday Times
Such a formulaic approach to stock picking has a distinctly patchy record. Times, Sunday Times
When employees are straight-jacketed into formulaic roles that don’t take sufficient advantage of individual strengths and weaknesses, or likes and dislikes, is it any surprise that their abilities are not used effectively? The Corporate Death of the Synergistic Team? « TalentedApps
The opportunity to be long-winded yet perfunctory, paradoxically daring yet formulaic, is available to only proven hit makers at the top of the heap. March 2008
What starts out as a formulaic high school love story of opposites attracting abruptly changes into a maudlin tear-jerker.
Talk to us in a year and maybe we'll be complaining about the formulaic narrative in Japanese anime.
It's a television set piece, something entirely formulaic, earnest, goody-goody, proud of itself, overproduced.
The songs are just so tentative and directionless, and the whole electro-acoustic thing so formulaically and routinely applied, that she seems like a mere pawn at the mercy of her collaborators and record company.
Too often, these series are overblown and melodramatic, populated by gigantic, tentacled demons and screeching, white-haired ghosts, telling the same formulaic stories over and over again.
She was an occasional mover once, an equal opportunity, though always at bottom DNC faithful gadfly to be reckoned with, but now she's become little more than a formulaic stock pot cooking up the same tired stone soup every week.
Chinese has an additive oral style, comprised of expressions of formulaic styling.
I guess working stiffs like their comedians to be aggressively stupid and insultingly formulaic.
The analysis of formulaic German binomial expressions of the form N und N reveals the following characteristics.
In other words, abstract, objective, and analytical thought reflects a literate society, and concrete, formulaic, and mnemonic thinking marks an oral culture.
Within its formulaic structure, the plot follows the dots.
Her plays contained Chekhovian echoes, as her friends and colleagues have noted; at least for me, they also evoked a Shavian kind of moral imagination and challenge, but with too much humor, warmth, and regret — too much life — ever to seem formulaic or austere. More Memories from Martin Brody
Having started off writing formulaic commercial fiction, soppy stories for women's magazines, she now begins each novel knowing little more than how she wants it to feel.
The lyrics include formulaic gospel cries and they are often delivered in the fervent style of gospel music.
The stanza is written like the formulaic examples of wit and allusion in old-fashioned riddle books.
Director, Eisner, deserves credit, too, for delivering a film that seems fresh and exciting, rather than stale and formulaic.
Still, one could say that all wakes are formulaic, rituals being a most popular and apparently effective means to deal with death.
Suspense and tension are squandered in the name of formulaic melodrama: Will they get the kids out alive? The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
These could then become less formulaic and better tailored. Times, Sunday Times
Upon meeting, formulaic greetings must be exchanged before a discussion can ensue.
But the premise of the jukebox musical pushes a preference for the formulaic to its logical extreme. Times, Sunday Times

How To Use Formulaic In A Sentence

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