Ward Farnsworth: 14 Ways To Make Your Writing Memorable | How I Write Classic Episode

David, you know what everybody's problem is? What? Too many words. If you're you're trying to say something in public right now and you want to get noticed and you wanna get remembered and you want people to say, Wow, look at that. It's so hard'cause there's a million other people all trying to do it at the same time. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So uh my project is trying to See what we can learn about how to deal with that problem by looking at people historically who've said things that worked that way before not because there is an internet, but because there is kind of an internet of time that uh time is kind of a tournament. And things that still sound great af a long time after they were said, you can say that's something that stood out, that's something that was well said.

That's something that was notably eloquent. We think of all the billions of utterances and a few have risen to the surface and still we still look back at those things and say, Wow. Well if you're thinking about how to make people say wow now Sometimes it helps I think to look at how people have have managed to say that over the years. So let's talk about tools for the purpose. That's what I want to do.

Yeah, you could let them do it. So you could admit it. No, that was what I was thinking. But you could do it with other kinds, with uh nouns. What's a a fancier word for light?

And then about five hundred years later you have the invasion of the French, and they bring their language with them. And they're sort of they're they're the invaders, they're the aristocrats.

So you've got these two coexisting languages. You've got the French of the new invaders and you've got the Germanic language that was already there. And it just mixes together for hundreds of years and it turns into the language we have now. So for everything in English that you want to say that matters, there's usually

A word that sort of derives from Old German and a word that derives from French and before that from Latin. The Germanic words we call Saxon usually and the and the other ones we can call romance words because they're from Latin, which is the language of Rome, so it's romance. Uh or or Latinate words.

Uh but you've got these two families, and as as a writer, you're always picking words. Every time you want to say something, every sentence you're out, you're choosing words, and you're usually doing it unconsciously. You're not thinking about what word to use. But there's always a choice, and once you realize that.

that there there are all these choices to make. You can start playing with the choices and and and making them more deliberately to get the effects you want. And great writers have always understood this and they've always done it. For good writers, if you have to have one rule is

Uh prefer Saxon words to to romance words or Latinate words. Now you don't need to actually know the difference. Say, well you know I don't know I don't know there don't see no Germanic word in a sa well look, prefer simple words to fancy ones.

But you can even f even if you don't know anything about Latin or French, you can figure out which words are which without too much trouble. The words that are from French or and before that Latin, they're usually words that are easily turned into other parts of speech and expanded. So acquire

is the verb, but it can become acquisitive or acquisition. With a with a Latinate word you can you often put a T I O N it the you can create a form that puts a T I O N on that. You can't do that with get. For acquire you can say acquisition. For get

the word get, I mean if you instead of acquiring it you get it, you can't there's no t way to put T I O N on that. You could say getting or gotten or something, but you can't do as much. They that that's how Saxon words work. Uh they just sound different also. Saxon words have usually are they shorter

You know when you think about our our uh four letter words for expressing things colorfully. Uh th those are usually Saxon words because Saxon words tend to be short and they've got hard sounds in them, like like C K. C K think about how many think about how many of those words we're thinking about have those sounds in them.

And yeah, that's because they're uh they're basically Germanic and sharper. And that's what you want when you wanna say something with that tenor. If you wanna say something politely, you use the word from from French. They they they came into English from French. So if you wanna say it bluntly, you say kill.

But if you want to be polite about it, you say execute or terminate, because execute and terminate came into English from French, and you can tell that because they can become words like execution, termination. But kill doesn't do that. Yep. Just kill. Killing. Sure.

Yeah, let's do some examples. So if you want to say something really important. You say it in Saxon. So And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Genesis 1 3, one of the most memorable things that Uh ever written in English. It's an amazing utterance in part because what do we have here? Let's see. Eleven Saxon words, and nothing but

And the King James Bible is very famous for that, for the v the tremendous simplicity of the language. It's all one syllable words, words that have been in English for a very long time. And I think that the authors of the King James Bible, the translators they understood instinctively, and probably more than instinctively, why that was so valuable. Because you're compressing something so significant and profound and important into words that are so humble that it creates this sense of of uh

strength and power that you just wouldn't have with fancier words. Some people think you need fancier Latinate words to create a sense of strength and power in your writing. They sometimes put you sometimes wonder why do people say acquire when they could say get

Why do they say create when they could say make? Well even the drafters of the Bible said in a couple verses earlier God created the heaven and the earth. They thought about that too. But uh it's always a choice. Which way do you say it? They could have said God made it. Well they decided not to say.

If you're the drafter, which way do you say it? It's a good question. But'cause you're but you're not drafting the King James Bible, you're drafting whatever you're drafting, but asking that kind of question which is There's always a choice. Why do I want to use this word what which word has the connotation I want? Uh which w and and often people will pick the Latinate word because they think it sounds a little more impressive.

And that because think of the hi the heritage of it. The Latinate words go back to the er the original aristocracy that came in from France. So they still have that that whiff of class or sometimes of pomposity and some people go for them because they think it'll make'em sound smarter. And it turns out that that uh when you really know what you're talking about, one way to know is you can explain yourself in Saxon words.

That's how you really know when uh when when you understand something well enough, it seems to me. But in any event, it's just an example of the the tradition of uh heavily Saxon English in the in the King James Bible, which is a very interesting thing we can come back to.

Let me show you a different um example that I know is dear to you, David. I know you'll enjoy everybody'll enjoy this. Famous words from Winston Churchill's. Let me read it. Yeah, you want to read it, you do it.

There's a lot of reasons for it. Uh one of them is the of course this device that uh in ancient times and in Greek was called anaphora. Which is repeating the same beginning uh at the start of different sentences or clauses. We shall fight, we shall fight, we shall fight. That's what most people think of and they think of this of this. But there's more going on

And so starting repetitive sentences repeatedly with these words, it leaves those words hanging in the ear. It's what you remember. And you remember the some of the details about where the fighting was gonna occur. You remember it was the beaches, you remember the others. But y what you remember is we shall fight.

a main point to basically say you to to basically get you to a place where you're listening up to say this is important because those words at the end are the crucial moments. That's when the goal is scored. But through repetition, he's Subliminally signaling to you, listen, this is important.

And one reason it's amazing to read is that by using the repetition of phrases, it creates in the ear this thing you're describing. Uh the same way that the the that's why it reminds you of the announcer. Because that you're hearing that not reading it. But by reading this, it creates some of that same feeling that the intonation would if you could hear it out loud. It's very interesting that way. So uh this is a this is a beautiful

Uh utterance for many reasons, and it's it is surrounded by additional beautiful language that we can't all cover at once. But one thing to notice about this is remarkable is thirty-two Saxon words in a row. That that might not sound like a lot, but you go try to go write thirty-two Saxon words in a row. It's not quite and to say something that worth saying. It's not as easy as it sounds. In in English there's a natural

I I don't I don't actually know the ratio, but there there's sort of a range of natural ratios between Saxon Latinate words and ordinary speech. And to go thirty two words in a row with no Latinate words. Now you might think, oh he wasn't thinking about that. Oh he almost certainly was. Churchill wrote about this.

He said d I I mean he wrote about rhetoric and he said in English the oldest words, the Saxon words are the ones that strike deepest and when you really want to strike deep you you stay there. He said you don't use the recent entries into the language that came in here from French.

Occo I mean the the the funny part is the recent entries came in, you know, only uh eight or nine hundred years earlier, right? Way way too recent for us. But uh but he knew all he he cared about that and he thought a lot about it. So when he wrote this

I don't know if he was sitting there thinking, gee, which was the etymology of that word. Nobody thinks about etymology, that's not the issue. But he knew the sound he wanted, he knew the force and strength he wanted. He went back to the same well that the translators of the King James Bible went back to, which is keep it very simple and very saxon, the more profound the substance is, and it really uh

creates a beautiful effect. The profundity of the substance of what he's saying packed into these this long series of extremely simple, unpretentious, unimpressive words. It's like the words burst at their scenes, you know? Very beautiful. Okay. As long as we're doing Churchill.

Never in the field of human conflicts. Was so much owed by so many to so few as Set in the House of Commons a few months after the uh Ah the last one. This is another of those things anybody who's ever read or heard this remembers it. This is said during the Battle of Britain, where the where the few he's talking about are pilots in the air over Britain fighting off Nazi uh air raiders. It's a great piece of English.

For many reasons there's a lot going on here. It's just like the last one, where there's there's a certain amount of repetition. So much, so many, so few. Uh that that's part of just as in the previous one, we had an aphora with the repetition at the start of the different sentences. But there's also another drama going on in here, which is just between the kinds of words he's using. Human conflict. Those are Latinate French words. They can become things like humanity or um

to create that contrast. It's it's sort of like you said with the the football announcers. Uh-huh. Because you don't want everything to be the same in rhetoric. You want to set up the Saxon words with the non-Saxon words. So the ear has been hearing these other things and it's primed to really be struck by the contrast. When those words come in, those little one syllable words. Stony Saxon word.

There's something else I wanted to mention about this, as long as we're talking about it, that you're i if if anybody who's made it with us this far probably cares about words there. Uh so I wanted to point out, of course, the sentence is in the passive voice. Right? It's a passive construction. Oh, by so many to so few. You know, you know you know something's passive when it either says Uh it's owed by or you could add by.

to t to the end of it. But in this case it's passive and you're reading so many books about English, avoid the passive voice. Over and over again. Whatever you do, don't use the passive voice. It's the uh the crutch of bad writers. Of course sometimes it is, but uh some of those beautiful things in English, uh even in the passive voice, you know, all men are created equal. Wow. Created equal. You could put a buy on the end of that, couldn't you? You could. They didn't want to make it act.

He didn't want to make this active either. If he'd made it active, what would he have said? Never in the field I mean'cause you could be imagined drafting it, thinking, hmm, this is passive. My editor has told me that I should never use passive constructions. Perhaps I should change this. You imagine the new Winston Churchill saying, Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few. That would be non passive. You could say that. It wouldn't be as good.

Because w when you say it that way, when you say it this way, the many and the few are right next to each other. With so much owed by, and then what's left over is so many to so few, so you get that beautiful contrast and the rhythm's better and different. I'm not here to say the passive voice is this uh thing every people should use unthinkingly. I just my view about the passive voice is just make sure you've got a good reason.

But that's what I'd say about everything in writing. There's no rule except make sure you've got a good reason for what you're doing. As far as I'm concerned. That that's the master rule. I mean I follow all rules of style and grammar and encourage others to, but if you need to break a rule, well Uh just make sure you know why you're doing it. Yep.

Ready for another?

So every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation. Why don't you tell you that's Latinate? It's got the T I O N right on the end of it. Right. Right. And same with divide, it could be division, right? This is a a fancier passage. In every city your house divided against itself shall not stand.

And then never has so much been owed by so many to so few, all la uh Saxon, Saxon, Saxon. Same general idea here. First say it. Notice how these sort of restate each other a little bit, just on a different scale. Start it out Latinate, but bring the sentence to a close. If you're trying to think about advice for writing, the idea would be Saxon words tend to work better than Latinate words to create forceful, memorable prose if they're properly arranged, but especially at the end.

simple Saxon words are a great great way to end a sentence or a paragraph, especially one that wasn't all that Saxon beforehand. Right. Because in that then that will th finishing that way really leaves an impression and those words really stand out because of the contrast and sound and style. It's a very subtle thing. People might not nobody's gonna pause and think, Oh look at that, he fin they they finished with Saxon words. Uh what th what the what they might just think is

And Lincoln, if you ask me, was the uh greatest master of prose we've ever had in our public life. So it's very interesting to think about how did he get that way? Like how how did Lincoln become Lincoln? And the answer is You know, thousands of hours of immersion in Shakespeare and the King James Bible. How about that? Right. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing to think about now. Think about presidents who are holed up with their uh Shakespeare and their Bible.

All right. Uh but look what he said. Uh this is right after Lincoln had received the Republican nomination for Senate in Illinois. Uh and slavery, of course, was the the the the the topic of the day.

of the bi of the King James Bible that he was reading all the time. And sometimes Shakespeare too. Uh the by his attachment to the Bible's better known, but the Shakespeare attachment is we can talk about it later or uh another day. But here you can just see he's basically quoting the excerpt from Matthew, uh, that we saw a minute ago, although there's a another passage just like it in in Mark, but it doesn't make any difference. Um

Again, let's start at the end. The most important part of a sentence is typically the end. So you want to work b if you're thinking about impact, work backwards from the end of the sentence. It will become or the passage, it will become all one thing or all the other. Okay? The sac the classic Saxon Finnish. But it's more than that. Notice how he's basically repeating what he said. Lincoln loved to say things twice. We said at the beginning, everybody in English speaks two languages.

And he says it he says it first in it's like he says it first in this language, then in that language. Imagine a politician who says it in Spanish then says it in English. Right. Like he says it in Latinate then he says it in Saxon. Because he's trying to appeal to the mind and the ideals and then he wants to get you in the gut, in the heart. He wants you to feel it. So we'll say I do not expect the union to be dissolved, union and dissolved are Latinate.

I do not expect the house to fall, that is Saxon. And it's basically repeating the same he's just saying the same thing twice, once more poetically, once more biblically. But I do expect it will cease to be divided, Latinate. It will become all one thing or all the other. It will cease to be divided, is the same thing as saying it will become all one thing or all the other. A modern editor would probably cross one out. You're saying it twice.

Say I know I'm repeating it. I'm speaking two languages. I'm saying it I'm saying it in Latinate, then I'm saying it again in Saxon. Yeah. And that's what he did a lot. And if you see a speech, say, Well, and Churchill does the same thing. He'll say it, then he'll basically repeat it. It w when you think of it, you say, you know, those two sentences are almost saying the same thing. This one's got the longer words in it, and the other's more

Words of one syllable, it's more uh picturesque, maybe it's a metaphor. But that's often what these really memorable speakers and writers do to create impact is they don't say it once, they say it twice, they say it differently. In different kinds of words that that appeal to different capacities of readers and listeners. How about that? And that's a very useful idea when you're trying to think about how to get through to somebody. You may have to say it in more than one language.

in music. Right. And it's like that in in English. I mean, you can just stick to simple and you at least one make a fool out of yourself. But if you want to get beyond that, but beyond just being efficient to being memorable and eloquent, You've got to be a student of contrast, I think, because that's what all the the the great writers understand either instinctively or through study or or both. Is that it's is is it anything that's great?

is tends to be greater when it's set off against what it isn't, because that prepares the ear for it. It l it lets you be struck by it. You know, we only really detect differences. You know, we we uh human creatures. So uh Lincoln was a great artist with differences and with writing language that used those differences to really uh create memorable stuff.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Said this in one of his opinions. If there's any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought. Not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate. Now so many people have said things like this historically. But this is one of the expressions of this idea that's really stood the test of time.

Freedom for the thought that we hate. Wow. That's a run of s hard Saxon words. It's a great way to end. Especially with that last word. Freedom for the thought that we hate. That last word is the one that rings in your ear. He sets it up that way.

That's the principle I'm talking about. I'll say it to you in Saxon words. And here you don't have to think about it. It's not conceptual. Everybody gets it immediately. That's the thing about Saxon words. They it's like you metabolize them instantly. You know, you talk about hate and um.

You know, enmity means that, but it but you gotta you gotta think about it a minute. You've got to think about hate everybody knows what that means right in the gut. And that's what la that's what Saxon words tend to be like. So you reserve them and af and so and so obviously the starkest word in the sentence is the last word in the sentence.

And so I say again, why does this why d why does this utterance hold up over time? Well Oliver Wendell Holmes was a real craftsman. He was the son of a very uh famous literary figure in nineteenth century America. And Holmes is I think the best writer American law has ever had. But he he Had the most beautiful collection of Judicial opinions, but also letters. If you want to study uh Varieties of great English. You sort of want to apprentice you.

To somebody who's worth it. Abraham Lincoln's worth it. You read Lincoln and you really think about how it sounds and why. Alvaro Alvar Wendell Holmes is like that too. If you like a law, he's somebody you could apprentice yourself to. You could think about why did he write it that way?

And and you know, Holmes didn't linger forever over his writing. He usually wrote he'd write standing up. Right he'd probably write in draft and leave. He probably didn't spend a lot of time on this. He didn't need to, he just grew up understanding it because he was immersed in the environment, he had the genetic gifts of just extreme sensitivity. And he knew by the time he said all this, it was time to wrap it up at the end, which is down to earth, if you want to make your point.

You can spend ten minutes with it and you'll be ten minutes better off in your knowledge of rhetoric. Okay. Enough about the books. I want to talk about a different rhetorical device than we have yet discussed.

It's called epistrophe. And here we have an example from Lincoln. So will you take it away?

Epistrophe means ending uh consecutive sentences or clauses with the same word or words, the same f word or phrase. It's sort of the opposite of anaphora. When we talked about that we shall fight on the beaches speech that Churchill did.

That's a classic case of anaphora. That's that's starting with the same words. We shall fight, we shall fight, we shall fight. This is the opposite. It's ending with the same word. Good to have both tools because the start and the end of a sentence are the really the most important positions in it for em for for rhetorical empathy.

Now, uh, the ending if anything is more important because it's the last thing you hear when you're for th for purposes of that sentence, and therefore it can ring in the ear. So I think I that's why I always talk about starting at the end. But in any event Lincoln loved epistrophe and if you read him you'll see that he often comes back to this and the and the the King James Bible likes it too. There are some famous examples there.

In this case, combining the Saxon approach with the here-hear ending, it's a very resonant And it's in this case a very somber thing to say. Of course there's this little irony in it because uh the world has long remembered uh what what he said there, and I don't know if it's remembered as well uh what they did here. So he may have had it backwards, but it was a beautiful thing to say.

Speaking of epistrophe, I promise you that Lincoln liked it and that he used it elsewhere. He even used it in the same speech.

but with people. And then he adds this shall not perish from the earth. So there's several things going on in this that make it great, just like with everything all the other examples we've seen. One is just the epistrophe. The repetition at the end of the people, right? Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Right. That's th epistrophe three times. Uh i follows the rule of three.

Uh I think there's also a usage of that phrase in in uh Jeremiah, but I think he pr he probably took it from Job. But this it's just an example of seeing the the King James constantly work its way into Lincoln's expressions, even four score than seven years ago is a is a is an adaptation from biblical language.

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To the utmost to the end. See, he reverses from epistrophe to an aphor. He goes from repeating at the end of each clause to a couple of rounds of repeating at the beginning. It's a great effect, and it's just another example it's like moving between Latinate and Saxon words, moving between repetition at the end to repetition at the beginning.

changing with repetition occurs. That kind of contrast really brings the device to life. That's really what I am trying to emphasize. There are a lot of principles in English like prefer Saxon words. But those uh the the power behind those principles is really at its best when it's combined with contrast, which is prefer Saxon words, but set them up.

Repeat at the end, but then repeat at the beginning. Sure. It's it because it's the mix, it's the bat it's the chord change that really grabs the ear. The ear is really grabbed by difference. And these are different ways to beautifully create difference. All right.

Here's a more modern example. We're doing a lot of uh Lincoln and and uh shirt show. How about uh Lloyd Benson? So he was he was the uh this is just for fun, but he was uh senator from Texas and he was on the Democratic ticket in nineteen eighty eight. And uh the you know, vice pre he he was the vice presidential

Uh, Dan Quayle was the Republican candidate and poor Dan Quayle, because he got uh he got posterized by uh Wade Benson. But uh he had been saying that although he'd been criticized for not having enough experience in as a legislator, uh to r to be in this position, he said, Well, I have about as much as John Kennedy did when he got elected. And so Lloyd Benson.

If you want to if you want to give a memorable insult, well uh ancient Greek rhetorical devices can be very useful in that way. In this case it means ending successively with Jack Kennedy. But it's not even just that, it's a little better than that. I serve with Jack Kennedy a new Jack Kennedy, then he reverses it. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine, right? And, and, beginning, and it's much better that way. Than just having relentless epistrophe.

Then back to it.'Cause the ear wants it. It wants that repetition back, right? It got used to it here. And then you started here. And now you return to it and it creates that satisfaction, which is why everybody who ever saw that But you still remember it. It's not just because it was harsh and sort of funny, it's because it was constructed in a way that really satisfies the ears. Yeah, a little bit like that. Yeah, between between uh two late nineteen eighties uh politicians. Anyways.

Uh I just wanted to show that uh th this example is a little more modern, a little more accessible. It's all the same basic rhetorical tools used for different reasons, maybe to inspire people, maybe to move them to tears, maybe to make them laugh.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. The most famous example of chiasmus probably in English is from Kennedy's inaugural speech in nineteen sixty one. The issue to me is it's easy to admire a chiasmus and say, Wow, isn't that pretty? Very memorable. But how do you make one?

Huh. I mean, i because how do you know when it's time to make one? I mean you can't make one out of anything. It's not like everything you say. If I said, David, why don't you talk to me on chiasmus for the next five minutes? It's not gonna work. Right. Only certain kinds of sentiments or or things you'd wanna say lend themselves to this rhetorical trick. What is the trick? It's reversal. It's it's basically an think of it as an A B B A structure.

So you've got A elements on the outside and B on the inside. So it's gonna be not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country. So the A part would be country that's on the outside. The inside of that Casmus would be you. Right? These are the B elements. So it's country U U country. A B B A. Okay. Uh that's the basic structure of a chiasmus. What kinds of things that you might ever want to say would be clues to you that, you know, maybe I could frame this as a chiasm?

But there are certain occasions, this shows one of them, which is you're trying if you're trying to tell somebody you've got it backwards. Right. You got the wrong end of the stick. Right it's the other way around. Anytime you're thinking those thoughts, you can think, aha, this is the kind of rhetorical soil in which a chiasmus might grow. So you could think, how can I express how they have it backwards by framing the elements in terms of you say it's da da da but it's actually done

You can try it that way. And you can try other rhetorical methods. A lot of these chiasms could be expressed as epistr with epistrophe if you wanted to rephrase them. But I'm just saying that's a clue. I think when you're trying to get the hang of using rhetorical devices, it's very helpful to learn about the different occasions

Like for for different kinds of things you might want to say, they tend to lend themselves to these kinds of of patterns. And then you can smell it. You can say, Oh, okay, I get it. I'm trying to say this kind of thing. That's the kind of thing you can use this for.

If you don't have any of those p patterns in mind, it's easy to admire these devices, but it's hard to figure out when to or how to ever put them to work. Once you have a sense of what the right kind of thing is that lends itself to this, much easier.

If you're writing a screenplay or you're writing a situation where you want somebody to have dialogue that really crackles, uh what you'll find is it's got a lot of these patterns woven into it. So you've got to be sensitive to when are you trying to say something that can lend itself to a pattern.

Um I think it's been too long since we had a line from Lincoln. Uh probably ten minutes. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

This one's not a literal chiasmus, it's I events events me. It's sort of a conceptual chiasmus. It's got the elements going from I to events to events to me, and I and me are the same person because So it's a chiasmus in that sense and it has that same nice ring, but it's kind of a half chiasm.

Uh you might say. Whereas uh that is a very literal one, and so it's it's easier for the ear to be delighted by that. Although I think it's they're both pretty delightful actually. But that's probab that's even more striking, and of course it's it's very short. Um and it's saying something that at the time was considered a very meaningful thing to say. So all of these things chip into the fame of that utterance and and that utterance is sort of like Lincoln talking about government

uh of the people by the people for the people. That's be the the the uh this example from Kennedy too had antecedents before he ever said it. Oliver Wendell Holmes had said something like it and so had um uh Kennedy's boarding school headmate. But anyway, there's nothing new under the sun.

Here's another chiasmus. I w Oh I wanted to uh just keep talking about occasions for a chiasm. Here's an example. It's as possible for a man to know something without having been at school as it is to have been at school and to know nothing. from this beautiful novel called Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. I just bring this out. It's a it's a it's a um Uh it's an attractive piece of English. But partly to say

There's more than one occasion for a chiasmus. Like I it's I said earlier that if somebody has it backwards, they got it the wrong way around, y your country doesn't owe anything to you, you owe something to your country. Then that might e might lend itself to a rhetorical device, maybe a chiasmus. There are others too. Uh for example

Anytime you've got give and take, I do this for you, you do this for me, you could have it. Anytime you've got a mix up where you've got things miss or out of alignment. You can recite the elements in a way that can lend itself to a chiasmus, where you could say it's as possible to know something without having been at school as it is to have been at school and to know nothing. Notice again, not a pure chiasmus, right? What are the inside elements of the chiasmus? Let's see.

uh possible to know something without me at school is it should have been at school and to know nothing. So school is the interior part of the chiasmus, the be. The outside of it is something and nothing. Not the same word, but the same E you're referring to the same thing, which is how much you know, and they both have thing in them.

Uh, just because the way English works. You can't always you can't put I and me. You can't put I in both places. It's gotta be I and me because that's how we speak English. But you can still it can still resonate in the ear, and that's the point of the of the of the technique. Okay. And now our last.

Back to where we started, okay? The Bible.

It's a combination of our first lesson and and and this new theme. In the middle you've got temptation and deliver, which are the fancier words. On the outside you've got

It's it's it's a very beautiful passage and s I'm just trying to point out that a chiasmus, as I say, can be something that works more conceptually than literally. It's a subtler thing, but it's part of the reason why every everybody remembers.

There's a lot going on. But that's part of the lesson is you take memorable things and you slow down long enough to really take them apart or x-ray them and think what are the elements, what are the patterns under the surface of this that make it sound so great? People don't sit around thinking about how impressed they are by your use of a technique. If they notice the technique, it's bad technique. What they might do though is be struck with the

That's well said. I mean once that's said that way, who wants to try saying it any better than that? Right. Why do people say that? Ever why people ever say that? Well they set most of the examples I've given you are things people have said that about for a long time. And if you slow down and look at'em you can see there are patterns and usually more than one.

that these sentences follow. And that's one reason why they stand out from the crowd and they s and then people still talk about them or and admire them and are impressed by them a century or two after they're said.

About your choice of words and how the choice over here affects the choice over there. How the use of of fancier words over here means it's time for simpler ones, because your reader's ear is gonna get tired. the the bigger ones. Or you can use the bigger ones to set up that sa that that that finale where you've got the run of short words that are very simple, very easy to picture, that get you in the gut, and you end with those.

And they ring in the ear. That's a rhetorical technique that a lot of the greatest masters of English have used extensively. So that was one tool. Another is an aphora or epistrophe, which are fancy old Greek words for very simple ideas, which is repeating a word or a phrase at the beginning of several sentences in a row, or more than one, or phrases, but at the start of several things you say. A epistrophe is repeating at the end. So Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech.

Very famous use of an Afro. I have a dream, I have a dream. Just like we shall fight, we shall fight. Starting the speech with these with these uh repeating ideas or finishing with it of the people, by the people, for the people. Same idea, uh, but just at the end of the sentence. And the last tool we talked about is chiasmus, which is basically taking the sentence, the structure of a sentence, and reversing it. So you've got A, B, but then B A.

And you've got these A elements on the outside and these B elements on the inside. And we saw those can be literally words. Like you have the A elements could be an identical word and B and that's like your country, you, you in your country. But we saw there are a bunch of other ways you can take those elements and and use them.

uh to express it's very helpful to be sensitive to the kinds of occasions or substantive things you might want to say that that call for a certain rhetorical pattern. So in the case of a chiasmus there are several that I mention, including um

somebody has something backwards, they have it the other way around. The idea of and vice versa. Anytime you're anytime what you mean to say is and vice versa, you probably could write that as a chiasmus. If you if you stared at the situation long enough, it would it would come to you in that way. Or that there's a mismatch. It's like I think Mark Mark Twain once said, uh the problem with life is that

Uh first we have the uh capacity to enjoy it without the chance and then we have the chance without the capacity. Oh wow. That's a great thing to say.

Uh, the shield part is beware, because things that are beautifully said sound more true. No reason to believe they are. And I think part of the reason you study rhetoric is to inoculate yourself against the charms of people who put things beautifully, and you don't want to be fooled into thinking that means they're right.

Then again they might be, but but they're two different issues. What we've seen in a lot of these examples is people using beautiful rhetoric to advance beautiful causes. You know, but you've got you've got a Lincoln in the Civil War, Churchill in World War Two, the translators of the Bible attempting to express the Word of God. But y in in all of these cases you've got rhetoric being put to work to inspire people.

in certain ways and the combination of that substance with the rhetoric is a is is a beautiful thing and heightens it. But of course you can use these tools for other ends, including bad ones. And so I think the study of rhetoric in part is to make people more conscious and aware of the choices they make when they write and how they can

by really taking a close technical patient interest in how they construct a sentence or a paragraph, make it more memorable, more striking to the ear, more sound more persuasive. But also to be aware of the fact the other people are doing that. People on the other side are doing that too. And you've got to be very careful about letting rhetoric trick you into thinking that the the more beautiful it sounds, the more true it is. It ain't necessarily

Uh so I think a sort of subtle or gentle use usually is the the best way to use these devices. And also not even d I I've talked about how a chiasmus might sort of be suggested by certain kinds of situations. But a lot of this I think is if you just immerse yourself in these examples, I mean part the reason I write these books partly is to collect beautiful examples that you couldn't read, internalize, study, think about.

But you don't imitate him. I mean anybody who imitates anybody sounds like a fool. I I and I don't think that's how this ever works. Think back to Lincoln. Lincoln learned how to write like Lincoln by reading the Bible, about reading Shakespeare. We we this this this is what we know. But never he never imitate.

You never read them and think, Oh, look at Abe Lincoln trying to sound like the Bible. Look at Abe Lincoln trying to sound like Shakespeare. That never happens. Because he would never he would never imitate. He had to write like somebody from his times, just like we have to write like people in our times.

If you read good stuff, it can sort of gently influence what your your ear thinks is a is an attractive way to say something. That's where Lincoln learned. We can do some of the same by reading Lincoln. Not to imitate Lincoln, but just to sort of in his instincts because in the another reason Lincoln's so important for this is

I think studying old examples is great. I think the best writing of the of the you know nineteenth century is beautiful stuff. A lot of people and maybe including a lot of viewers might think that stuff seems very boring. The they use too many endless sentences, arcane arcane language.

Well, Lincoln's a really good counterweight to that because if you read Lincoln, he's not like that at all. Nobody thinks of Lincoln as being pompous, writing purple prose, trying to impress anybody, being rhetorically seeming fancy. Lincoln has a reputation of being very plain. But he was also rhetorically very sophisticated.

Because as we've seen, yes, he was very plain, but look at all the patterns and artfulness in the way that he would deploy his words. So he's a great example in that way. He shows you that there's a way to be a a beautiful writer about very important things.

Even in private life, I mean a lot of the examples in the book from Lincoln's letters. He said, What about a letter? I I've got lots of letters in the book of people using it just to express themselves what they personally mean about something in a way that's memorable to their immediate audience.

Uh you a you asked where does this get used in life now? So I think th un understanding the Gettysburg address is important and valuable even if you never plan to be uh writing or delivering a Gettysburg address. 'Cause it's just a lesson. There's a l it's a it's a lot of lessons in how to arrange words so they're striking. So they're memorable. Every everybody wants to write words that are striking and memorable. If you're writing on Twitter or writing a blog

You're competing against millions of people who are doing this exact same thing. Right. And the question is, even and and you might even be expressing a lot of the same ideas they are. How can you express whatever worthy idea you have in a way that's worthy of it? Hey, you look a little chaos.

You said these are the things that people need to focus on, these are the main lessons they want to teach, besides what we've spoken about today. How would you structure the curriculum? What are the main things that you would teach? Well

It's like learning how to draw before you try to become a painter. You you've got to be able to do that. And so all the books that tell you about omitting needless words and and and how to structure a paragraph, that stuff's crucial. My my interest is in lesson two.

Because I think for a lot of people their education in writing basically ends after lesson one. Good writing is the most efficient writing. End of story. That's what I think is the is the sort of ethos behind m most books on writing. Your goal is to be clear and concise. That's the end. Well of course those are everybody's first goals, but you can be clear and concise and

mesmerizing, inspiring, and memorable, or clear and concise and tedious and boring and nobody cares. Uh many people are clear Lincoln was clear and concise, but many people are clear and concise and few of most of them aren't Lincoln. So what did he know beyond that?

He must have known something else, because he was more than clear and concise. And the question is what else did he know? So for my class, and I've taught, you know, rhetoric classes, and part of what I like to do is after we've gone over the uh basics. Have students actually imitate, have them rewrite stories.

um sometimes modern Supreme Court opinions as Oliver Wendell Holmes would have written'em. That's a very interesting exercise. Uh it's not because you want to go around imitating Holmes'cause you'd sound like again, you'd sound like a fool, but if you have to imitate You've really got to get in there and listen. If you want to imitate somebody's writing, you've really got to understand it. Yeah. You got to you've got to listen to it very carefully, or you're not going to sound right.

So you've really got to get in there, understand what made Holmes sound like Holmes? What were the signatures of his style that made him so amazing? So you read this, think about it, and then eventually your imitations get better. And then you throw away the imitations. You don't imitate anymore, but look at what you've learned. By by having to do that. So im imitation's actually a very useful thing. Memorization, imitation, these things are underrated.

That's the first thing. It's gotta sound natural. So if you force your writing to follow some other rhetorical idea or somebody else's writing style, it's never gonna sound right. It's gotta sound like you. So how do you make you in the way you speak, your authentic way of expressing yourself, more eloquent and impressive? And the answer is you just gently immerse yourself in good examples of people who are constantly talking that.

That's the I think that's the idea. Is is y you eventually you write and speak what you read. To some extent. You also write and speak the way your peers write and speak, and that's a counterinfluence. And right now, by the way, it's often a very bad one.

That's the issue, I think, is that one reason you study rhetoric in good English is to give yourself a break from the lousy rhetoric in English that you're surrounded by in social media. I mean social media is like a campus where rhetoric is taught. It's not taught well, my opinion. By b in other words, it's taught by bad example.

by the quality commitment of this. This is high end. And I think God bless you for trying to take this topic that we both love, which is words, and give it the classy treatment it deserves. It's just wonderful. It's just a great thing you're doing, man. And I'm so I feel like it's a real real honor to be having anything to do with it. Thanks