Being concise isn’t the only way to capture the attention of your readers. Although picking the most optimal and efficient words gets your point across quickly, it can feel rhythmically lacking when some clients are after catchier options. To help us put aside our tendencies for brevity, we return to Mark Forsyth’s book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase to discover more literary tricks that have been used throughout the ages.
Glazing over grammar with enallages
An enallage is an instance where you intentionally make a grammatical mistake. Yes, contrary to what all our English teachers may have insisted, being grammatically incorrect is a viable tactic in writing – the most notable example being Apple’s “Think Different” – instead of the far more insipid, yet grammatically correct “Think Differently”.
“That definition raises all sorts of philosophical questions about whether a mistake can be deliberate, and all sorts of linguistic questions about what correct English grammar is and whether one chap really has the right tell another chap he’s wrong,” muses Forsyth. Apart from catchy slogans, enallages are strewn across various dialects of English. Old spaghetti westerns are a common culprit – take The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, where Clint Eastwood’s character Blondie says, “God’s not on our side because he hates idiots, also” (instead of too or as well).
Enallages are commonly present in poetry, also. Take T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which he begins with:
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky…”
“Let I go?” asks Forsyth. “Of course, it may just have been there to rhyme with sky in the next line. I’ll never be sure and I can’t ask him now. Most people don’t notice the problem, but I have a theory that it’s that little enallage, pricking away at the unconscious, that has made the line so famous.”
Are enallages a free pass to skip on grammar and spelling checks? You’d best take that nonsense outta here pardner… A single grammar “mistake” done right may be witty, but a slew of them can devolve your writing into a hot mess that no one wants to read.
Making velvety verses with versification
There is no English verse formatting as renowned as the iambic pentameter. An iamb is defined as “a foot containing unaccented and short syllables followed by a long and accented syllable in a single line” and features words with the “te-TUM” kind of enunciation. A pentameter is a verse with five of these in a row. The majority of Shakespeare’s sonnets in Romeo and Juliet are fine examples of iambic pentameter:
Romeo: “If I profane with my unworthiest hand,
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing Pilgrims, ready stand,
To smooth the rough touch with a tender kiss.”
Juliet: “Good Pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”
In addition to iambs, Forsyth points out there are three other common feet: Trochees (goes TUMty), Anapaests (goes te-te-TUM) and Dactyls (goes TUM-te-ty). Each foot can then follow three types of meters: Pentameters (five-in-a-row, as in the passage above), Tetrameters (four-in-a-row) and Trimeters (three-in-a-row). Simply mix and match a foot with a meter to create a format for your verse! Here’s an example from the poet Lord (George Gordon) Byron that uses an anapaest with a tetrameter:
“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold”
Lord Byron’s anapaest and tetrameter is powerful, sure, but notice how Romeo and Juliet’s sonnet flows a lot more naturally. Not to mention, the rhyme scheme makes it awfully catchy. The words shared between the star-crossed lovers are very easy to read out aloud because of the te-TUM te-TUM structuring. “The TUM falls on the offbeat, [hence] the rhythm is gentler,” comments Forsyth. Creating a natural flow in pronunciation is what iambic pentameter excels at – let’s try using an iambic pentameter with an ABAB rhyme to describe a new kind of ice cream:
Normal:
Announcing the new Marshmallow Madness!
A new take on the classic Rocky Road,
Marshmallow Madness contains double the marshmallows.
Sign up for a chocolately, nutty and extra marshmallowy adventure!
With iambic pentameter:
Of nuts, of chocolate and of ‘mallows,
We present to you Marshmallow Madness,
From Rocky Road of which most hallowed,
Now doubled the ‘mallows, oh so gorgeous!
Getting a perfect iambic pentameter in a precise te-TUM te-TUM configuration with 10 syllables per line is extremely difficult (unless you are Shakespeare), but we think the iambic pentameter-esque version beats out the normal. Aim to have each verse flow naturally into the next – and if you can sneak in a rhyme, it’s just a cherry on top!
Epizeuxis, epizeuxis, epizeuxis
When a parent or teacher calls us by our full name, there’s a good chance we’ve done something terribly wrong… but when our names are called out more than once, it might be a good time to say our prayers and brace for an imminent punishment.
Instances where a word or phrase is repeated in the exact same way are examples of an epizeuxis. It’s “Simple. Simple. Simple,” notes Forsyth. “It’s like a nuclear bomb: immensely effective, but a bit weird if you use it more than once every five minutes.” It’s the reason why the two iconic rules to the film Fight Club or the American real estate agents’ maxim of “location, location, location” have stood the test of time.
However, epizeuxes are “ambiguous” and can be classified under two categories. The first being of intense emotion (like the examples discussed above), the other being “quiet” and even “dismissive”. A notable example of the latter would be when Polonius asks Hamlet what he’s reading. Hamlet replies with a disinterested “Words. Words. Words.”
If you decide to use an epizeuxis to drive home a point – ie. “This product is all about Value. Value. Value.” – then it’s important that your audience can easily identify whether you intend to convey passion or disinterest. In a speech, passion can easily be expressed using tones, inflections and pauses to create tension – like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responding to former European Commission President Jacques Delors with her infamous “No. No. No.”
In writing, passion can be expressed with exclamation marks… but that’s a bit lazy, isn’t it? Instead, integrate passion throughout your copy and not just through the epizeuxis. In the example above where a product’s value is the highlight, show consumers how they would benefit from purchasing the product and how it would improve their lives. If readers can feel the excitement of your product from the get-go, they won’t mistake your epizeuxis for disinterest.
From tactical grammar mistakes to rhythmic beauty and triple repetition, these are but some of the ways that we can steer away from conciseness to discover eloquence. To find out what else Forsyth has in store for us, stay tuned for the next chapters of his book!
To check out the other literary devices we’ve covered in the past:
Part 1 – Alliterations and assonance
Part 2 – Polyptotons, antitheses, merisms and blazons
Part 3 – Hyperbatons, anadiplosis and periodic sentences
Part 4 – Parataxis and hypotaxis
Part 5 – Diacopes and rhetorical questions
Part 6 – Hendiadyses, epistrophes and tricolons
Part 7 – Syllepses and isocolons