Copywriting Academy 5: Rhetoric for beginners

You’ve got to hand it to the ancient Greeks, they knew a thing or two. And while they didn’t get everything right, their skills of argument and persuasion – formally known as rhetoric – are still used by writers and politicians the world over.

Persuaded by Obama? Entranced by Martin Luther King? Inspired by Mandela? Well of course the content is critical but it’s rhetoric that turns the content into poetry.

Now it could be that you’re turned off because it’s all a bit too academic, a bit too hoity-toity for you. Don’t be. Rhetoric is simple, powerful and effective (and it'll probably save you some time too).

The following post is going to be very top level and focuses on one class of rhetoric – contrasts. If you want to go deeper then I recommend ‘Lend Me Your Ears’ by Max Atkinson which has a brilliant summary in plain English backed by lots of examples (which is also where I got the quotes and the category descriptions used below).

Max starts off by showing that even the most banal content can be brought to life with rhetoric. Take the following example:

Nobody is going to make me change my economic policies.

Well, it’s direct and has a definite sense of certainty about it but it doesn’t exactly stir the soul or stick in the memory. However, with a little rhetoric applied it is transformed into:

You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.

Which is of course how it got reported and remembered after Margaret Thatcher gave her Conservative Party conference speech in 1980.

Now wouldn’t you like to write something that’s remembered by millions almost 30 years later?

Basic contrasts

As the name suggests, this is where you contrast one thing against another. Often, you select two words or phrases that are diametrically opposed to each other. Failing which, to achieve the desired effect, they need to be at the very least related in form or content. So, as an example:

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mahatma Ghandi

The contrast between ‘die tomorrow’ and ‘live forever’ coupled with an almost identical structure between the two sentences is what makes this work so powerfully. Notice also the repetition of ‘live’.

Contradictions

Essentially, this boils down to ‘not this but that’ and follows a negative with a positive (or vice versa). An example:

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King

Again, notice the repetition of ‘where he stands’. Also the contrast between ‘moments’ and ‘times’.

Comparisons

Here we are looking at contrasts that show that something is better or worse by degree (as Max Atkinson puts it, ‘more this than that’). Over to Lincoln:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln

Opposites

The world is not black and white. Opposites, however, are. In this approach you are selecting fully opposed words and phrases and then playing them off against each other. So take the following:

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be solved with what’s right with America.
Bill Clinton

This wouldn’t have worked without the wrong/right opposite.

Phrase reversals

This one is tricky (I can’t remember ever coming up with one myself). But with a phrase reversal you have two phrases that use virtually the same words but which, in the second phrase, are reversed. JFK was the master of this technique:

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
John F Kennedy

Further reading

As I mentioned at the beginning, I thoroughly recommend Max Atkinson’s book, ‘Lend Me Your Ears’. Alternatively there is a pretty comprehensive resource online – A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices complete with all the Greek names for the techniques.