Mark Forsyth "The Elements Of Eloquence" (Icon Books)
What a great book! Not something to read cover-to-cover, but something to pick up with regular periodicity and savour. Perfect for a writer's or editor's reference shelf.
Packed with information, wonderfully expounded, reinforced with classic examples, and peppered saltily with wit, this is a great resource. Forsyth says "This isn't a dictionary of rhetoric, nor was it meant to be." and yes, it is much more than a dictionary. And I don't know what the term would be, or if there even is one, for the opposite of cliffhanger, but Forsyth mastered it, ending each chapter with a tie to the next chapter.
This is a most fascinating journey through a myriad of little tricks (e.g., rhetorical techniques) of how to create a language that is memorable. The author uses a huge range of examples, ranging from popular culture to the classics. Many of the quotes are very familiar, but it is interesting to look at them under the microscope. As Forsyth points out, some of them don't even make sense taken literally, but the turn of phrase is so good, our senses and intellect just pass right over it. In other cases, phrases that made sense in their original form have mutated to shortened versions, such as "A miss is as good as a mile", where we understand the meaning, even though grammatically it is clearly missing a few words.
The book covers over 30 types of rhetorical techniques, but other than a few, such as alliteration or assonance, their names are semi-unpronounceable Greek-derived terms you have probably never seen before and will certainly not remember. Honesty, a poster would be helpful. I could see hanging one over my desk that i could turn to if I were looking for an idea to spice up or improve something I was writing.
Because there are so many techniques, and many of them are hard to tell apart (as the author admits near the end of the book), it grows tedious after a while. Most of the best stuff is toward the front of the volume. Forsyth's favorite author is clearly Shakespeare, who is quoted throughout, and he makes interesting observations about how Shakespeare's language changed over time and about how Shakespeare repeated (and usually improved upon) certain techniques.
Another fascinating subject Forsyth discusses is the order of adjectives. In English, there is a very strict order we must follow. It is a big, blue ball--never a blue, big ball. Forty fierce British soldiers--not British fierce forty soldiers. The order is opinion-size-age-shape-color-origin-material-purpose-Noun. This seems to be hard-wired in our brains since we were certainly never taught this in school, yet we use it unconsciously every day. This is the type of revelation that makes this book rewarding.
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