The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

by Mark Forsyth

A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely.

“The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”

antitheses are not too hard. You make a first statement that is relatively obvious, for example, “If a man is a gentleman he knows quite enough.” The second half begins in an obvious way: “If he is not a gentleman” . . . and then takes an odd turn: “whatever he knows is bad for him.”

adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun.

when you repeat a word with a different vowel, the order is always I A O. Bish bash bosh.

The importance of English word order is also the reason that the idea that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition is utter hogwash. In fact, it would be utter hogwash anyway, and anyone who claims that you can’t end a sentence with up, should be told up to shut.

anadiplosis doesn’t have to be used for logic. It can simply add a harmony, in the same way that a repeated musical phrase binds two sections together.

“government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

It’s government of the people, by the people, for the people. Even though I can’t for the life of me see what the difference is between “of the people” and “by the people,” it doesn’t matter. It’s three and three sounds good.

At the beginning of a sentence epizeuxis has rather more power. “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” “Gone, gone again.”

Do you hear how you’re pausing? If you try tapping your finger along to the beat, you’ll find that the little pause at the end of the line is exactly one beat long. It’s as though you’re filling in the missing time and making it up to the nearest even number.

“And thou art dead, as young and fair.” It’s not that Byron usually started sentences with “and,” he just knew the quickest way to make an iambic tetrameter. If you’re really stuck you can just repeat a word: “My love is like a red, red rose.”

Jonson said that when he wanted to write poetry, he just wrote prose and then mucked around with the word order and banged it with a verbal hammer until it fit nicely into a verse form.

Irony is an untruth that both parties know is untrue, that both parties agree is untrue.

Irony is always about what people have in common,