3.7. How to Make Language More Impressive
The following suggestions will to give your language impressiveness.
Describe a thing instead of naming it. Do not say “circle”, but “that surface which extends equally from the middle every way.” To achieve conciseness, do the opposite—put the name instead of the description.
When mentioning anything ugly or unseemly, use its name if it is the description that is ugly, and describe it if it is the name that is ugly.
Represent things with the help of metaphors and epithets, being careful to avoid poetical effects.
Use plural for singular, as in poetry, where one finds “Unto havens Achaean,” though only one haven is meant, and “Here are my letter’s many-leaved folds.”
Do not bracket two words under one article, but put one article with each: “that wife of ours.” The reverse to secure conciseness: “our wife.”
Use plenty of connecting words. Conversely, to secure conciseness, dispense with connectives, while still preserving connection: “having gone and spoken”, and “having gone, I spoke”, respectively.
Describe a thing by mentioning attributes it does not possess, as Antimachus does in talking of Teumessus: “There is a little wind-swept knoll…”
A subject can be developed indefinitely along these lines. You may apply this method of treatment by negation either to good or to bad qualities, according to which your subject requires. It is from this source that the poets draw expressions such as the “stringless melody”, thus forming epithets out of negations. This device is popular in proportional metaphors, as when the trumpet’s note is called “a lyreless melody”.
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