As professional writers, it’s not uncommon to get caught in a loop of writing in the same style over and over again – especially in commercial writing, where clients expect (and pay you) to do just that. Thankfully, the existence of literary devices allow us to escape from monotony… provided we know how to use them of course! From rhetoric and repetition to everything in between, it’s time we dive back into Mark Forsyth’s book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase for more clever ways to bring eloquence into our writing.
Going full circle with epanalepses
When we write, we often have a destination in mind. If we want to promote a new product or service, our writing takes the reader through a journey of what their life could be like with said product or service. While most literary devices would agree with that line of thinking, the epanalepsis says no to linearity. It’s a bit of a rebel.
What is an epanalepsis? It’s an instance where we start and end something on the same word. John Lennon’s lyrics in the song “Yesterday” is a notable example. “You find out that the guy’s unhappy, and that he longs for the past, but it never goes beyond that. There’s no resolution,” muses Forsyth. “Lennon was quite right. After all, the song begins with the word ‘yesterday’ and ends 125 words later with the word ‘yesterday’.”
Where linearity has its obvious uses, it’s often regarded as the only way to write – we’re conditioned to seek progress and improvement, so what good is a line of thinking that doesn’t go anywhere? Under most circumstances, that argument would hold true… but in the pursuit of eloquence, logic and rationale aren’t always cast in the leading roles. “Ending where you began has two effects that are, at first sight, contradictory,” explains Forsyth. “It gives the impression of going nowhere, and it gives the impression of inevitably moving on.”
The scale of an epanalepsis can be as grand or as small as you make it. For a small scale example (which are much easier to pull off versus something like Lennon’s song), Forsyth points to Robert Burns’ simple phrase of “man’s inhumanity to man”. Given the countless atrocities that people have committed against each other, an epanalepsis offers a poetic way to associate inhumanity with further inhumanity. “The phrase wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable if Burns had written ‘man’s inhumanity to others’,” says Forsyth. From “lies begets lies” to “nothing will come from nothing”, epanalepses are fantastic for identifying out cruel cycles – which from a commercial perspective, can be used to address the problems of consumers before explaining how you can help!
Animating the inanimate with personification
Like the alliteration and assonance, personification is often one of the first literary devices that we are taught – it’s easy too! By simply giving human attributes to a dead or inanimate object (like a tree or car), we can create the impression of life.
However, Forsyth asserts that there are many levels of personification. Commonly uttered phrases like “work is on the phone”, “money talks” or “duty calls”, while embodying the qualities of personification, is not truly personification. Why? Consider what you follow up with “that was work on the phone” – it’d usually be something along the lines of “the office needs me to go in for a bit” or “they need to talk to me about my performance”.
In the cases above, “‘Work’ is something like a group noun, or a synecdoche,” writes Forsyth. “It’s not a human figure with eyes and lips and legs and bad breath.” To fix this, we simply need to give “work” more human qualities, like so:
That was work on the phone. In an act of cruel self-indulgence, her royal highness has decreed that must I attend to her over the weekend.
Why compare a needy workplace to a generic entity when you can compare it to an overpampered princess? Or an overweight slaver with cigar and whip in hand… or an Instagram-fuelled hipster with the raging desire to follow whatever is on trend… the possibilities are endless.
On the other end of the spectrum, allegories are personification on steroids. “It’s personification that has moved in and taken over the whole story. In allegory, the person isn’t just suggested by a human verb, it’s fleshed out and dressed up and given a house to live in.” Furthermore, Forsyth finds allegories to be most commonly used in religious contexts and with deification – “people worship money and nature, or rather Money and Nature, and turn them quickly into goddesses or gods,” he explains. Consider Edmund’s line from King Lear:
“Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound.”
Much like an artist singing excessive praises to his muse, it’s a little overboard for everyday uses. Furthermore, it would possibly detract from whatever item or service you would be trying to promote – there should only be one star when you write, and allegories are too eager to suck up the spotlight. Stick with standard personification and you’ll find that even the dullest objects can be granted the illusion of life!
Hopped up on hyperboles
People love to exaggerate. Like personification, it’s one of the most prevalent literary devices in everyday use. Have you heard phrases like “flatter than a pancake”, “deader than a doorknob” or “waiting for ages”? Those are common forms of exaggeration. Hyperboles are a variant of exaggeration, but it needs to be absolutely absurd for it to qualify! “We do not use hyperbole enough. We lack ambition,” describes Forsyth. “The state of Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake. It’s quite possible to have a ton of money – all you need is £2,853.93 in coppers. If you really want to make a hyperbole work, you must make sure that it is beyond anything that is even vaguely possible.”
To truly be absurd, think like a cartoon character. Why just have a ton of money when you can swim through a literal vault of gold and treasures like Scrooge McDuck? Why wait for ages when an age is only a century or so? Try an eternity!
It’s easy to get carried away with exaggerating, and more importantly, exaggerating can cause problems when you’re trying to advertise a product of service. Imagine if you’re promoting a vacuum cleaner and you claim “it can suck like the Hoover Dam”. That’s a very bold claim and you’re guaranteed to have consumers who expect an ultra-powerful motor… how disappointed they’ll be when they find out your vacuum doesn’t live up to the promise. That’s not to say exaggeration can’t be used at all in commercial work. Try this:
“Are you fed up with your home being constantly covered in a metric ton of dust, pet hair and kibble? Let Vacuum-tron 3000 give you a hand.”
Instead of exaggerating your product’s power, try exaggerating your consumers’ plight. They’ll recognise it to be an exaggeration, probably have a laugh, and most importantly, you won’t be liable for false advertising.
Commercial writing is only as monotonous as we make it. With these easy to use (and fun) literary devices, dullness won’t be an issue any longer. If you liked this article, be sure to check out others from this series!
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 iscolons
Part 8 – Enallages, versification and epizeuxes
Part 9 – Zeugmas and paradoxes
Part 10 – Chiasmus and catachresis
Part 11 – Litotes, metonymies and synechdoches
Part 12 – Epithets and pleonasms