The Elements of Eloquence: How To Turn the Perfect English Phrase

by Mark Forsyth

Shakespeare got better because he learnt. Now some people will tell you that great writing cannot be learnt. Such people should be hit repeatedly on the nose until they promise not to talk nonsense any more. Shakespeare was taught how to write.

Nobody knows why we love to hear words that begin with the same letter, but we do

Shakespeare knew that content was not nearly as important as form.

You may not mean to diacopise, but you will, dear reader, you will.

When you end each sentence with the same word, that’s epistrophe. When each clause has the same words at the end, that’s epistrophe. When you finish each paragraph with the same word, that’s epistrophe.

Three is the magic number of literary composition,

This form of chiasmus is just repetition in a mirror. It’s easy to do, and to do it is easy.

Numbers feel mysterious and significant. So all you need to do to sound mysterious and significant is to pick a number, any number.

‘Dance Me to the End of Love’. That’s a perfect catachresis.

A catachresis is any sentence that makes you stop, scratch your head and say ‘that’s wrong’, before you suddenly realise that it’s right.

A transferred epithet is when an adjective is applied to the wrong noun.

Those with the time to complain about time-wasting have too much time on their hands.

We are all casual creatures and we say things that we don’t really mean; so, when we really mean a thing, we say it twice. Or three times.

‘The king is dead; long live the king’ sums up both sides of epanalepsis.

About pronouns they were sometimes wrong, the old masters; because you can use a pronoun before saying what it refers to. It’s an odd little technique, and it’s called prolepsis.

Congeries work precisely because readers and listeners aren’t used to them. We can deal with gold-tongued flattery and snarled threats, but a list?

The technical name for a heap of insults is bdelygmia,

Some people believe that a sentence has to have a main verb. Nonsense! It’s quite possible to hold a long conversation without a verb in sight.

Scesis onomaton can therefore set an eternal scene,

Anaphora (an-AFF-or-a) is starting each sentence with the same words.

anaphora has all the power. It’s so preposterously easy to do. It’s so preposterously easy to pick some words. It’s so preposterously easy to repeat them. Everyone can do it. Everyone can start a sentence the same way. It takes no skill. It takes …

Above all, I hope I have dispelled the bleak and imbecilic idea that the aim of writing is to express yourself clearly in plain, simple English using as few words as possible. This is a fiction, a fib, a fallacy, a fantasy and a falsehood. To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility.

For though we have nothing to say, we can at least say it well.