What makes something “concrete”? If you can examine something with your senses, it’s concrete. A V8 engine is concrete. “High-performance” is abstract. Most of the time, concreteness boils down to specific people doing specific things. In the “Unexpected” chapter, we talked about Nordstrom’s world-class customer service. “World-class customer service” is abstract. A Nordie ironing a customer’s shirt is concrete. Concrete language helps people, especially novices, understand new concepts. Abstraction is the luxury of the expert. If you’ve got to teach an idea to a room full of people, and you
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