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17 SECRETS
TO MAKE YOUR SENTENCE SING
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CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction
1. Alliteration
2. Chiasmus
3. Personification
4. Hyperbole
5. Repetition: Anadiplosis
6. Repetition: Diacope
7. Repetition: Anaphora
8. Repetition: Epistrophe
9. Tricolon
10. Isocolon
11. Antithesis
12. Paradox
13. Hypotaxis
14. Congeries
15. Hendiadys
16. Syllepsis
17. Rhetorical Questions
Conclusion
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INTRODUCTION
Some years ago, an Austrian ex-farmer with an accent thick enough
to squash an elephant told me my English language skills were not
good.

If life was a film script, that would be when I decided to become a

writer. Instead, I cursed him for a while and carried on doing what I
was doing.

But that insult still smarts, when others have washed away like so
many sandcastles by the seaside.

Why? Because I love words. I love their beauty and their power. I love
learning what they can do. I love using them well.

The questions that keep me up at night aren’t the same as they are
for most people. For me it is questions like:

What makes a phrase powerful? Why do some sentences stick in your

head? Why do some tweets make you retweet? Some quotes stick in
your head for a long, long time after you read them? What makes a
piece of writing beautiful? And can you learn it?

The answer is yes. There are tricks great writers use to make their
writing memorable and beautiful. In this course I want to introduce
you to seventeen of the best.

This course will give you the toolkit you need to always have the
right way to phrase your words for maximum effect.

It's time to make your sentences sing.

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Alliteration (noun)
repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or
more neighbouring words or syllables

ALLITERATION
Old Marley was dead as a doornail.
CHARLES DICKENS

Alliteration is a classic. Everyone does it. It’s simple. Alliteration is the

repetition of consonants across a phrase.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Everyone does it but not everyone does it well.

The key is not to overdo it. The Peter Piper example is far too much. It
sounds clunky and contrived. You're aiming for something smooth and
rather subtle. (See what I did there?)

Here is a great example from CarvingThought:

Pairing it works really well, because it connects each pair in your mind,
but he doesn't overdo it by trying to alliterate them all.
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ALLITERATION

Not overdoing it is key. Overdone alliteration is embarrassing. No

"Seven super-secret subtle sales systems". Be better than that.

If people notice it immediately, you're doing it wrong. It should sound

good without being immediately obvious why it sounds good.

Here are a few tips to make that happen:

Don't overuse a thesaurus. It's too easy to force in a word in that

doesn't fit because it has the right first letter. Always use the best
words.

Think about the middle and ends of words. Alliteration is

traditionally done at the start of a word. But it doesn’t have to be.
In fact, it’s often better as it keeps it so much more subtle.

Break up a streak with contrasting sounds (e.g. see the 'rather' in

my see what I did there sentence on the previous page, or the
‘much more’ in the example above).

Read poetry to see it done well but remember to tone it down for
prose.

Try assonance. We could spend a whole section on assonance, but

it is basically alliteration with vowels. Much more subtle, especially
in English.
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Chiasmus (noun)
an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of
parallel phrases

CHIASMUS
One for all, and all for one!
ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Humans love symmetry. It’s what we see as beauty in people’s faces,

in architecture, and in words. When it comes to words it is known as
chiasmus.

Chiasmus is when the start reflects the ending. If the ending reflects
the start, that is a chiasm.

Chiasms are tricky to get right. Just like in my example, it often feels
contrived.

But if you pull it off, it is memorable. There are hundreds of

examples in literature. Then there are the clichés: “when the going
gets tough, the tough get going” etc.

And the political slogans: “Ask not what your country can do for you,
but what you can do for your country”.

Jesus also used chiasmus: “Man was not made for the sabbath, but the
sabbath made for man”.

The trick to ensuring that your chiasm sounds profound rather than
contrived, is ensuring that you’re not just repeating the words in an
empty way.
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CHIASMUS
To write a good chiasm you must be repeating and developing the
ideas. "All for one and one for all" is saying something in both halves.

All of us will fight for any one of us

Any one of us would fight for all of us.

Both parts work together. Dumas is not just taking a phrase and then
repeating it backwards.

Chiasmus also works with alliteration or assonance. Look at the title

of this course where the double S at the start mirrors the double S at
the end.

Subtle. But it worked, didn’t it? Humans love symmetry.

Here is a great example of a subtle chiasm from Investor's Theory.

"Taking no risks" mirrors "risk you could ever take". This makes it much
more effective than just writing "The biggest risk is not taking any
risks" or something similar. Mission to Man does it well here too
(click through for the amazing visuals):
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Personification (noun)
attribution of personal qualities especially: representation
of a thing or abstraction as a person or by the human form

PERSONIFICATION
The iron tongue of midnight.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

People like people. Mostly. Personification takes advantage of that

and turns abstract concepts or inanimate objects into people, by
giving them features normally associated with human beings.

Like all these tricks, you can take it too far. Overdone personification
becomes allegory. Or you can keep it too subtle. “Duty calls” is
technically personification of duty, but it doesn’t work as a rhetorical
flourish.

You need to strike the balance between beating your reader over the
head with an extended allegory and barely personifying at all. The
best way to do it is to take one aspect of humanity and apply it to
your concept.

As with almost all these tricks, Shakespeare is the master:

"O, beware, my lord of jealousy / It is the green-eyed monster…"

"The silver hand of peace"

Or the header quote above.

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PERSONIFICATION

In each case on the last page, Shakespeare takes a single aspect of a

person (eyes, tongue, or hand) and applies it to a concept (jealousy,
peace) or the inanimate (midnight).

He doesn’t go on about “the green-eyed monster of jealousy whose

gnarled hands doth reach for thy heart. That creature that strides upon
the hills of human avarice” etc. That works, but it’s a bit too on the
nose for prose.

Keep it subtle and people will lap it up. That is how you personify
well.

Here I stretched it a little bit further. This is touching on allegory, but

it worked pretty well:
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Hyperbole (noun)
extravagant exaggeration

HYPERBOLE
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye,
but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
CHRIST JESUS

Hyperbole is exaggeration to make a point. Specifically, it’s

intentional over-exaggeration, ideally using specific imagery. Not just
saying “this is the best painting ever” but “If Rembrandt had seen this
painting, he would have hung his head in shame and never painted
again”. Hyperbole should be bombastic and over the top.

There are lots of common phrases and clichés that are forms of
hyperbole. E.g. “Granny is as old as the hills” or “I could sleep for
days”. It is also common in poetry:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

Expressions of love in literature often use hyperbole, so look for it

there. See what works and what doesn’t. The trickiest part, again, is
balance.

Going way over the top works too. But it works differently. Way over
the top hyperbole is best used as humour. Chuck Norris jokes are a
classic example. Or Paul Bunyan stories in Canada/North America.
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HYPERBOLE

Be specific and avoid cliché. As old as the Himalayas works better than
as old as the hills.

It works best if you can work in multiple elements from the image.
Rather than just saying Fred was as big as a bull write Fred was as big
as a prize bull and twice as grumpy. It make it much more evocative.

Exaggeration and specificity help to drive the image home. Did you
spot it in the opening line of the introduction to this course?

Here is a simple example from The Art of Purpose. It's not literally
true that everything is within the reader's reach if they just stop
watching TV. But the exaggeration drives the point home.

And it's a nice use of Anaphora (page 16) too.

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Anadiplosis (noun)
repetition of a prominent and usually the last word in one
phrase or clause at the beginning of the next

REPETITION: ANADIPLOSIS
...suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame...
THE APOSTLE PAUL

Repetition, repetition. Everyone loves repetition.

Especially on Twitter, it’s about the only rhetorical flourish anyone uses.
And that is because it is easy.

But there’s more to repetition than just repeating things. There are a
few main types of repetition and four are worth thinking about here.

First, anadiplosis. Anadiplosis is when you repeat the last word in the
previous clause, with the first word in the next.

The most well-known example is Yoda.

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Imagine Yoda had just said:

Fear will make you angry and then you’ll learn to hate and that will
cause suffering.

Doesn’t sound so wise now, does it?

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REPETITION: ANADIPLOSIS
The reason anadiplosis works is that the repetition causes it to sound
strong, certain and logical. After all, you wouldn’t repeat something you
weren’t sure of. Would you?

Try it next time you’re writing a list tweet or outlining a process on your
blog.

Instead of writing:

Work hard / Learn new skills / Master them / Succeed.

Try:

Hard work brings learning. / Learning brings mastery / Mastery

brings success.

It’s the same content. But one way it sings and the other falls flat.

Jacob and Andy both do a fantastic job with anadiplosis here:

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Diacope (noun)
repetition of a word or phrase with one or two intervening
words. It derives from a Greek word meaning "cut in two".

REPETITION: DIACOPE
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Repetition, repetition. Everyone loves repetition.

Anadiplosis isn’t the only form of repetition. It’s the form at the
start of that opening phrase: “Repetition, repetition”. But there is
another kind, diacope.

Diacope is when you split a repeated word (or phrase) by

something else. The second part of that opening phrase:
“Repetition, everyone loves repetition”.

The classic example, other than Shakespeare above, is James Bond.

A plain name, but when he introduces himself in Dr No, the phrase
stuck. Why? Diacope.

Bond, James Bond.

Diacope is so powerful that people read it into things that were

never actually said. The Wicked Witch in The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz never actually said “Fly my pretties, fly!” but it’s one of the lines
everyone ‘remembers'.
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REPETITION: DIACOPE
You can use diacope in multiple ways. You can add a name or a
title, “Yeah, baby, yeah”, or you can add an adjective: “From sea to
shining sea”.

You can use diacope with whole phrases, or you can do it like the
examples above and keep it snappy.

You can also combine it with anadiplosis like in Shakespeare’s

quote in the header, or my opening line.

There are so many ways to use this trick and it’s an easy one to
work in.

Choi does it parodying Shakespeare here:

And Matthew applies it to flipping, to make an excellent opener:

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Anaphora (noun)
repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of
successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially
for rhetorical or poetic effect

REPETITION: ANAPHORA
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight
in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender
WINSTON CHURCHILL

Anaphora is arguably the most powerful rhetorical trick of all.

Winston Churchill had his most famous speech using anaphora

(quoted above). In reality, it is a speech about losing. But people
didn't hear 'we’re going to lose but we’ll lose well'. They heard the
repeating cadence “We shall fight, we shall fight, we shall fight”.

Anaphora is everywhere. From Churchill, to Martin Luther King Jr:

“I have a dream… I have a dream… I have a dream…”

From MLK to Haven Gillespie:

“You better watch out / You better not cry / You better not pout…”

From Haven to the Teacher in Ecclesiastes:

“For everything there is a season...

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal...”

But anaphora has a dirty secret. It’s really, really easy.

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REPETITION: ANAPHORA
How hard could it be to repeat the same words?
How hard could it be to start each phrase the same?
How hard could it be to stir your readers up?

The trick is not to overdo it. Anaphora is a call to action. It evokes

strong emotion. Don’t just stick it in anywhere or it’ll sound clunky
and amateurish.

Anaphora kills it on Twitter, by the way.

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Epistrophe (noun)
repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive
phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for
rhetorical or poetic effect

REPETITION: EPISTROPHE
Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever
they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there… An’ when our folk eat the stuff
they raise an’ live in the houses they build – why, I’ll be there…
JOHN STEINBECK

Each form of repetition has a different vibe, and a different effect on

the reader. If you go in with a vague “I’ll just repeat things” you’ll
waste space, annoy people and lose attention. Use repetition like a
surgeon uses a scalpel. Only in the right place, in the right way and
for the right reason.

Epistrophe is the opposite of anaphora. Anaphora repeats the start of

a phrase, but epistrophe repeats the end. It’s more common, and
much more subtle. Huge numbers of songs use epistrophe. Hallelujah
(Leonard Cohen) uses epistrophe. American Pie (Don McLean) uses
epistrophe. Shakespeare uses epistrophe. Steinbeck uses epistrophe.
This paragraph uses epistrophe.

Again, there is not a lot to it except don’t overdo it.

Epistrophe is great if you want to add a subtle emphasis like

Abraham Lincoln:

...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth...
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REPETITION: EPISTROPHE

It’s also used with great effect by the Apostle Paul:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I

reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Here, the epistrophe (a child) sets up the contrast with becoming a

man and putting off childish ways. The epistrophe there makes you
think he’s going one way, and then there is a “but” that flips it on its
head.

Using epistrophe to set up a contrast like that is very effective.

Synth uses epistrophe to make his point well here:

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Tricolon (noun)
a period in classical prosody composed of three cola

TRICOLON
I came; I saw; I conquered
JULIUS CAESAR

Good things come in threes. People like things that come in threes.
Write things in threes.

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

"Friends, Romans, countrymen"
"Sex, wealth and relationships."

The brain loves to form patterns. As soon as you see two things in a
list, your brain jumps to connect them.

You can play on this urge with a tri-colon. Set up a pattern with two
connected items, then break it on the third.

You can base that surprise on sound. Like “ready, steady, go” where
one and two rhyme, but the third does not.

Or you can riff off the concepts in your tricolon. For example, “Eat,
drink, and be merry”. Eat and drink naturally go together, but “be
merry” doesn’t fit the category. The only reason you associate the
three is because it’s in a well-known tricolon.

It often works best to extend the last item. Look at the first and
second of my list above. The third item is longer than the others.
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TRICOLON
Try to save the longest part of your tricolon for last, even if it’s the
least important. The pursuit of happiness is not as important as
either life or liberty – but it’s the longest bit so it goes at the end
and rounds out the phrase.

Try it next time you want to do a short list tweet. Two similar things,
one different.

Or you can make up a longer list which has multiple tricolons. It’s a
simple way to add flair. Set up a pattern. One, two. Then break it on
the third beat.

Go ahead and try it. See what is possible. Conquer your reader's
hearts.

Here's a simple example:

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Isocolon (noun)
1: a period consisting of cola of equal length
2: the use of equal cola in immediate succession

ISOCOLON
What the hammer? what the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
WILLIAM BLAKE

Tricolon is technically a form of isocolon. Repeated phrases of equal

length and ideally of similar construction. It’s just a tricolon when
there are three of them.

Tricolons work best, but other forms work well too. The bicolon (two
cola) is excellent for tweets. A lot of the tweets you see out there use
this. C. S. Lewis has a great example in Till We Have Faces

Nothing that’s beautiful hides its face. Nothing that’s honest hides
its name.

There’s a bit of anaphora (page 16) there too, which makes it even
better. And antithesis (page 24) tends to work well in a bicolon.

JFK did it very well in his classic line:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for
you — ask what you can do for your country.
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ISOCOLON
And our exemplar Shakespeare, as always, taking it to the max:

The name of king? o’ God’s name, let it go:

I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints
And my large kingdom for a little grave.

Isocolon makes things memorable, but it also provides a sense of

balance and symmetry. It’s hard to argue with something that feels
as balanced as the JFK or Lewis quote above, even if the content is
rubbish.

It’s very easy to work into your tweets, and anything else you write,
just like the example below:
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Antithesis (noun)
the rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel
arrangements of words, clauses, or sentences

ANTITHESIS
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair
CHARLES DICKENS

On the surface, antithesis is quite simple. Say a thing and then say
another thing. Easy. It’s an isocolon that contradicts itself. Sort of.

There are two basic ways to use this. In a long paragraph such as
above, often combined with anaphora (see also Ecclesiastes quoted
in anaphora). Or, as a one liner.

The first is obvious, like in the passage from Dickens above, you just
say something, then say something opposed to it. Then you repeat
until the effect is established. Repetition plus antithesis is a winner.

One-liners are trickier. For a one-line antithesis to work well as a

rhetorical device it really needs to be witty or clever. Oscar Wilde
was the master of the antithesis one liner. He had clever lines like:
“Don’t tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one
knows that life has exhausted him.”

But the secret to his wittiest lines was that he set up an obvious
follow up with the first half, then broke it in the second:

“Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one.”

“Young men want to be faithful and are not: Old men want to be
faithless and cannot.”
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ANTITHESIS
A simple one-liner using antithesis is effective on a platform like
Twitter. It’s simple and easily digestible, but it also makes people
think, laugh and engage. Bonus points if it pokes fun at the people
your audience dislikes.

Twitter is for those who love their minds. Instagram is for those who
love their behinds.

You get the idea.

Save Your Sons does it really well here:

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Paradox (noun)
a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to
common sense and yet is perhaps true

PARADOX
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
GEORGE ORWELL

A rhetorical paradox is a statement that seems contradictory but isn’t.

A rhetorical paradox should not in fact be contradictory, but it should

sound like it is at first. Oscar Wilde again:

“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what
one wants, and the other is getting it.”

Paradox can be hardhitting, like the famous British electoral poster:

Or it can be funny, like Johnny Cash:

“The one on the right was on the left.”

Or it can be thought-provoking like Hamlet:

“I must be cruel to be kind.”

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PARADOX
The fact that the paradox seems contradictory at first is great for
engagement. Half of your audience will miss the point and comment
to tell you how stupid you are. The other half will get it and
comment to tell you how clever they are. It also sounds deep.

The point in a paradox is to make the reader pause, think, and figure
it out for themselves. If you catch their attention and make them
work for it they’ll appreciate it a lot more.

Just make sure it does make sense…

Two great examples above which use the paradox really well. The
immediate reaction is "what, that doesn't make sense" which stops
the reader scrolling past.

But as soon as you think about it, it's obvious. Buying cheap stuff is a
waste of money, and most of the work that goes into success is
totally unseen before the tipping point.
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Hypotaxis (noun)
syntactic subordination (as by a conjunction)

HYPOTAXIS
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim…
JOHN KEATS

Hypotaxis is not for Twitter. But it's an important reminder to pick the
best tool for the job.

Hypotaxis is what all the writing guides tell you not to do. And
sometimes, it is exactly what you need to do. Sometimes. Be cautious
with this one.

Normally you want your sentences short and snappy. Simple and clear.

Hypotaxis is the opposite. It’s allowing your great big convoluted

sentence to sprawl across the page, carrying on and on with subordinate
clause after subordinate clause and on until the short attention spanned
reader has long given up.
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HYPOTAXIS

Don’t use hypotaxis on Twitter.

Don’t use it in sales copy.

But if you’re writing a novel, or a longer essay, it can be useful. By its very
length and complexity, it slows the reader down. It sounds gentle and
civil, even when it isn’t. For example, Dickens:

It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept
a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as that useful
member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the
case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and
easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of
handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions.

In other words: Lawyers are snakes who only say nice things because it is
free.

But it sounds so gentle the other way. You almost don’t realise he’s being
insulting until you finish the sentence.

And even then, you have to read it twice (which is why it doesn’t work in
copy or tweets).

No tweet examples because tweeting like this is a terrible idea.

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Congeries (noun)
the collecting of units or parts into a mass or whole
the condition of being so collected

CONGERIES
Our experts describe you as an appallingly dull fellow, unimaginative,
timid, lacking in initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of
humour, tedious company and irrepressibly drab and awful. And
whereas in most professions these would be considerable drawbacks,
in chartered accountancy they are a positive boon.
JOHN CLEESE

This will be short. Because you’ve used congeries. You know what it
is.

It’s a list. It’s a posh way of saying a list. Literally it’s a ‘heap’ and it
comes from piling on the adjectives and nouns into one great bit
heap.

You want to bury your reader under description – like Cleese does
so well in the example above.

Congeries isn’t quite the same as the standard Twitter list though.
For one, you’re aiming for longer. You also want it to run on in a
smooth unbroken flow.

The effect comes from the effortless nature of it. It’s hard to come
up with a list, people don’t naturally do it. We get to two or three
items and then go “uh… and… uh…”.
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CONGERIES
When you just keep going and going, people are amazed by it. It
sounds so impressive and assured.

Again, not really one for sales copy. But for a poetic description, or
an insulting one, it is hard to beat a good heap.

It also works really well to drum the same point in over and again in
different ways. Aesthetic Wisdom does this really well here,
repeatedly reinforcing the newness of the world to explore:
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Hendiadys (noun)
the expression of an idea by the use of usually two
independent words connected by 'and' instead of the usual
combination of independent word and its modifier.

HENDIADYS
vinclis et carcere (with chains and prison)
VIRGIL

Hendiadys is interesting. It’s not particularly powerful as a rhetorical

trick. But it can add a little flair and variety in the right
circumstances. It’s also quite simple.

Take a noun and an adjective (normally) and turn the adjective into a
noun. Join with a conjunction and you have hendiadys.

Shakespeare could have written that life was full of furious sound, but
instead he put “sound and fury”.

What’s the point in hendiadys? Well it can do a few things. In the

case of “sound and fury” I’m pretty sure Shakespeare picked it
because it sounds better and fits the beat of the line.

In other cases, it can make something helpfully ambiguous.

Did the Apostle Paul mean to work out our salvation with fearful
trembling? Or trembling fear? Or did he mean fear AND trembling? A
Greek student could probably tell us, but in English it sits
ambiguously in between all three.
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HENDIADYS

At other times hendiadys serves to make you think more deeply

about the relationship between the two terms e.g. in Hamlet “the
expectation and rose of the fair state” where Shakespeare splits the
phrase expectant rose and gives us the idea that the waiting and the
bloom are separate and distinct aspects of Hamlet’s role.

The problem is that the ambiguity can make it hard to tell if

hendiadys is even there or not. If I say my barbequed pork is nice and
smoked, am I saying it is nicely smoked, or just both smoked and
nice?

However, unless you are an English teacher, it doesn’t matter. If it

makes it sound pretty, then use it. Use it for the smoothness and the
flow. Use it for the poetry and the beauty. Use it for the novelty and
the fun.

It's quite simple to try:

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Syllepsis (noun)
the use of a word to modify or govern syntactically two or
more words with only one of which it formally agrees in
gender, number, or case

SYLLEPSIS
...where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Syllepsis is fun. A lot of fun. What you do when you want to use
syllepsis is to use one word in multiple incongruous ways.

In our opening quote, Thoreau uses “put out” in three different ways
to refer to hanging up the washing, extinguishing the fire, and
kicking the mistress out of your life.

In the Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens says that Miss Bolo “went
straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair”.

Syllepsis is humorous when it’s used like this, poking gentle fun at
the flexibility of the English language.

It can also be an effective contrast. The Prophet Isaiah told the

Israelites to “rend your hearts, and not your garments,” contrasting the
physical and metaphorical uses of rend.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards used the same technique somewhat
less seriously with “She blew my nose and then she blew my mind.”

Though perhaps they changed it to nose so that it was safe to play

on radio...
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SYLLEPSIS
TV writers love this when they are looking for a witty comment. For
example, in Star Trek: “You are free to execute your laws, and your
citizens, as you see fit.”

Or in the West Wing: "The theme of the Egg Hunt is 'learning is

delightful and delicious'—as, by the way, am I."

The danger is that there is only a hairsbreadth between sounding like

you are clever and witty, and saying “look at me, I am clever and
witty!” Syllepsis sits bang on that line. In a song or a bit of witty
dialogue you’ll mostly get away with it.

It is harder to pull off in straight prose. Be careful with this. But enjoy
giving it a try.

I had fun with it here. Saving the syllepsis for the last line helped to
save it from being too clever for its own good and it went down
really well.
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Rhetorical Question (noun)

a question not intended to require an answer

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS
...O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

There are more than fifteen different types of rhetorical question, if

you want to be fussy. Do you? No? Good.

A rhetorical question is one to which you don’t expect an answer,

don’t wait for an answer, or the the question answers itself.

Bob Dylan never expected to be told how many roads a man must
walk down. It is generally assumed that the Pope is in fact a Catholic
and bears do in fact defecate in an arboreal environment.

Or try a money Twitter classic:

Do you want to die poor, alone and overweight?

Technically there could be a different answer to that. But realistically

nobody is going to say “yes please”. That makes it a great opener to a
tweet or a call to action. Your audience is already on board. They’re
thinking “no I don’t” and then you go on to explain why your idea or
product can give them what they want.

Another form of rhetorical question is to ask a question and

immediately answer it. What do we want? Delayed gratification! When
do we want it? Not yet!
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RHETORICAL QUESTIONS
Using a well-placed rhetorical question repetitively is powerful too.
Shakespeare again gives us one of the best examples as Shylock
defends his humanity in The Merchant of Venice:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

As you read the first three questions it sets up the pattern in your
head “well, of course, that’s obvious” and when he asks his final
question you think “well, of course, that… wait…”.

That is the power of a well-used rhetorical question.

Money Twitter loves these:

The Giver also uses a rhetorical question really effectively in his bio.
Nobody has working to 65 as a goal. As soon as you click in you're
already thinking "No, I don't. Maybe this account can help."
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CONCLUSION
So, there you go. Seventeen ways to make your sentences stand out.
To add a little beauty to the world with your words. Some of them
are easy. Some are hard. Some will run like wildfire on Twitter, some
work best elsewhere.

I hope you found it helpful. You can get me on Twitter

(@GetPaidWrite), or you can email me (getpaidwrite@gmail.com). I
hope you enjoyed this course within a course.

But more importantly, I hope you act on it.

Next time you write something, pull this up. Scan across the contents
page and think “could I use any of these to make this better?” Write
down your favourites and pin them somewhere. Go through your
twitter drafts and see if you can work any in.

Take some time to practice. Find a passage you love that uses one of
these and write it out. Pick one and sit down. Write a dozen tricolons.
Alliterate several sentences. Practice your repetitions. Repetition is
practice after all. You’ll probably never use your practice sentences.
That’s okay. Eventually, you’ll start using these tricks naturally.

Go and write. Write beautifully.

Write well.

1
Note: All dictionary definitions except diacope taken from Merriam Webster Online and
accessed 11/01/2021. Diacope taken from Wikipedia, also accessed 11/01/2021.