Do you know what’s worse than a boring story? Boring delivery. Try reading these passages (courtesy of The Paris Review) and see if you can go beyond the first paragraph. While the article quotes material from 1892 with the intent of helping you fall asleep, you’ll find that such lacklustre styles of writing are still around even today.
If you’ve read our previous article on alliterations and assonance from Mark Forsyth’s book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, you’ll know that a touch of poetic prose can give your copy a much-needed lift. However, if you’re looking to explore deeper into the art of rhetorical manipulation, read on to find out more…
Propping up polyptotons
Have you ever had trouble discerning between words that sound exactly the same despite having different meanings? Like “whether and weather” or “which and witch,” using both of these in the same sentence creates a polyptoton – take, for example, The Beatles’ tune “Please Please Me”.
According to an interview, Lennon’s inspiration for the title came from a verse of Bing Crosby’s song “Please”, which went:
“Please,
Lend your little ear to my pleas
Lend a ray of cheer to my pleas…”
Although “please” and “pleas” are spelled differently, Forsyth argued that it still counted as a polyptoton provided “the words have a close etymological connection or are just different parts of the same verb.” To better illustrate this, he points to Shakespeare’s affinity for polyptotons:
“Tut, tut!
Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle
I am no traitor’s uncle; and that word ‘grace’
In an ungracious mouth is but profane.”~ The Duke of York in Richard II
In the example above, the formatting of “verb me no verb” is a brilliant way to set up easy dialogue or lyrics with flair (like in the verses of “Love me Good” by Jo Stafford). “Anybody can write ‘hello me no hellos’ or ‘how are you old chap me no how are you old chaps’,” explains Forsyth. “It’s almost too easy to do, but you’re bound to come up with a good line.”
Polyptotons don’t have to be overly melodramatic either! From Shakespeare again, Forsyth quotes lines like “speak the speech” and “the rain it raineth every day”. The alternative would be to write it simply as “speak” or “it rains”, but the former gives your copy just a touch of dramatic flair and poetic charm.
Making surprises with antitheses
Despite their unfriendly sounding name, antitheses provide a witty way to drop a surprise on your readers – perhaps that’s why the master of wit Oscar Wilde liked using them so much. An antithesis is where “you first mention one thing: then mention another” using the formula of “X is Y, and not X is not Y.” For example, consider this famous line from Wilde:
“The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”
A Wildean antithesis, Forsythe explains, always begins with something relatively obvious. If you are familiar with the history of late 1800s England, you’ve probably familiar with the snideness of the upper crust society. After reading the first sentence, it’s not illogical to think that the wise would contradict the posh… right? Not quite! With Wilde’s antitheses, they often bait you into a line of thinking before stating “an unexpected inversion”. Here’s another quote from Wilde to help further illustrate it:
“Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.”
While this line is hardly ground-breaking today, it certainly was during Wilde’s time. He refused to adhere to the social norms of fashion (men usually wore tall hats with modest-coloured shirts and coats), and instead, opted for non-conforming dandiness and flamboyance.
“This is the soul of antitheses, and this is what makes it so simple,” writes Forsythe. “Any statement, however basic, can grow into an antithesis. Why just say that life is sweet when you can add that death is sour?” Antitheses are not exclusive to Wilde either, from Charles Dickens to Katy Perry’s song “Hot N Cold”, antitheses are all around us!
Expanding on merism and blazons
“Merism is when you don’t say what you’re talking about, and instead name all of its parts,” explains Forsythe. For example, at the beginning of any speech, the speaker normally begins with something like “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” which is a merism for people.
In marketing, merisms are a handy way of tightening your scope of audiences. For example if you were promoting a medical product that alleviated back pain, instead of calling them users or consumers, you could perhaps refer to audiences as “the elderly, overworked office workers, students, tired athletes” and such. Consumers react best when they feel like a brand understands their troubles – addressing them directly is one way to do so.
On the other hand, blazons are when you go too far with merisms. Using the example of “ladies and gentlemen” again, here’s what it could have turned into:
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, old and young, rich and poor, Hong Kongers and Mainlanders, doctorate degree holders and those without, owners of British passports or other foreign identities…”
You can see how easy it is to go overboard. According to Forsythe, blazons are most often used to describe the attributes of a person romantically (eg. your eyes are like… your lips are like… your hair is like… etc.). Outside of mushy poetry and archaic writing, you’ll rarely encounter blazons. It’s probably for the best, as going through these are like to listening to the “ravings of a lunatic” – you’ll probably lose your audience within the first few lines if you tried this in marketing!
It’s unfortunate that polyptotons, antitheses and merisms don’t see as much use as alliterations or assonance, but it doesn’t mean that they are any less useful at giving your copy a clever boost. To learn more nifty poetic tricks that you can add to your copywriting arsenal, stay tuned!