‘The king died, and the queen died.’ B) ‘The king died, and the queen died of grief.’ Most people will retain the second story more easily. Here, the two deaths don’t just take place successively; they are emotionally linked. Story A is a factual report, but story B has ‘meaning’. According to information theory, we should be able to hold on to A better: it is shorter. But our brains don’t work that way. Advertisers have learned to capitalise on this too.
