David you know what everybody's problem is what Too Many Words If you're trying to say something in public right now and you want to get noticed and you want to get remembered and you want people to say wow look at that it's so hard because there's a million other people
all trying to do it at the same time you know what I mean yeah yeah so uh my project is trying to see what we can learn about how to deal with that problem by looking at people historically who've said things that work that way before not because there
was an internet but because there was kind of an Internet of time that uh time is kind of a tournament and things that still sound great a long time after they were said you can say that's something that stood out that's something that was well said that's something that was
notably eloquent you think of all the billions of utterances and a few have risen to the surface and still we still look back at those things and say wow well if you're thinking about how to make people say wow now sometimes it helps I think to look at how people have
have managed to say that over the years so let's talk about tools for the purpose that's what I want to do well one of the things you said to me is that everyone who speaks language is basically by everyone who speaks the English language right exactly so what do you mean by
that what I mean by that is uh in English there's basically two almost always two words for everything there's sort of a bigger word a more a fancier one and there's a smaller humbler one so if I say a word a verb like create that' be the fancier version of a of another
verb what's the other verb make make right or if I say if I say acquire get to get right or if I say I'm going to permit somebody to do something what's the yeah you could let them do it so you no that was what I was thinking that's just what I was thinking but you could
do it with other kinds with nouns what's a a fancier word for light illumination exactly and uh a fancier word for something's last in in order the final the final one right exactly right correct exactly we got it you're David you're rocking so uh why is this
important so uh this is not just a coincidence uh English is made out of two languages uh that were sort of tributaries into it you've got languages from Invaders from what we would now think of as Germany who brought their language with them and then about 500 years later you have the
invasion of the French and they bring their language with them and they're sort of they're they're the Invaders they're the aristocrats so you've got these two coexisting languages you've got the French of the new Invaders and you've got the Germanic language that
was already there and it just mixes together for hundreds of years and it turns into the language we have now so for everything in English that you want to say that matters there's usually a word that sort of derives from old German and a word that derives from
French and before that from Latin the Germanic words we call Saxon usually and the and the other ones we can call romance words because they're from Latin which is the language of Rome so it's romance uh or or latinate words uh but you've got these two families and as as
a writer you're always picking words every time you want to say something every sentence you're right you're choosing words and you're usually doing it unconsciously you're not thinking about what word to use but there's always a choice and once you realize
that that there there all these choices to make you can start playing with the choices and and and making them more deliberately to get the effects you want and great writers have always understood this and they've always done it for good writers if you have to have one rule is
uh prefer Saxon words to to romance words or latinate words now you don't need to actually know the difference say well you I don't know I don't know the difference you a gtic word in a well look prefer simple words to Fancy ones but you can evenig even if you don't
know anything about Latin or French you can figure out which words are which without too much trouble the words that are from French or and before that Latin they're usually words that are easily turned into other parts of speech and expanded so acquire is the verb but it
can become acquisitive or acquisition with a with a latinate word you can you often put a Tio at the you can create a form that puts a Tio in on that you can't do that with get for acquire you can say acquisition for get the word get I mean if you instead of acquiring it
you get it you can't there's no way to put Tio n on that you say getting or gotten or something but you can't do as much that that's how Saxon words work they just sound different also Saxon words have usually are they shorter you know you think about our our four-letter
words for expressing things colorfully those are usually Saxon words because Saxon words tend to be short and they've got hard sounds in them like like CK think about how many think about how many of those words we're thinking about have those sounds in them and yeah
that's because they're uh basically Germanic and sharper and that's what you want when you want to say something with that tenor if you want to say something politely you use the word from from French they came into English from French so if you want to say it bluntly
you say kill but if you want to be polite about it you say execute or terminate because execute and terminate came into English from French and you can tell that CU they can become words like execution termination but kill doesn't do that yep just kill killing show me some examples
yeah let's do some examples so if you want to say something really important you say it in Saxon so and God said let there be light and there was light Genesis 1:3 one of the most memorable things uh ever written in English it's an amazing utterance in part because
what do we have here let's see 11 Saxon words and nothing but and the King James Bible is very famous for that for the the tremendous Simplicity of the language it's all one syllable words words that have been for a very long time and I think the the authors of the
King James Bible the translators they understood instinctively and probably more than instinctively why that was so valuable because you're compressing something so significant and profound and important into words that are so humble that it creates this sense of of
uh strength and power that you just wouldn't have with fancier words some people think you need fancy or latinate words to create a sense of strength and power in your writing they sometimes put you sometimes wonder why do people say a choir when they could say get why do
they say create when they could say make well even the drafters of the Bible said in a couple verses earlier God created the Heaven and the Earth they thought about that too but uh it's always a choice which way do you say it they could have said God made it they decided
not to do that if you're the drafter which way do you say it it's a good question but because you're but you're not drafting the King James Bible you're drafting whatever you're drafting but asking that kind of question which is there's always a choice why do I want to
use this word what which word has the connotation I want uh which and often people will pick the latinate word because they think it sounds a little more impressive and that because think of the the heritage of it the latinate words go back to the the original
aristocracy that came in from France so they still have that that whiff of class or sometimes of pomposity and some people go for them because they think it'll make them sound smarter and it turns out that that uh when you really know what you're talking about one way
to know is you can explain yourself in sax and words that's how you really know when uh when you understand something well enough it seems to me but in any event it's just an example of the the tradition of uh heavily Saxon English in the in the King James Bible which is a
very interesting thing we can come back to let me show you a different um example that I know is dear to you David I know you'll enjoy everybody will enjoy this famous words from Winston Churchills let me read it yeah you want to read it you do it we shall fight on
the beaches we shall fight on the landing grounds we shall fight in the fields and in the streets we shall fight in the Hills we shall Never Surrender render Winston Churchill 1940 House of Commons that's right so uh England's facing the prospect of invasion uh there's no actual recording of this
speech very much too bad there's a recording of him saying it later but in any event what do you there's a lot of this is one of the most famous speeches ever given in English and you know to what does it owe its immortality I mean it sounds amazing now it sounded amazing
then people read that and they say that's a speech there's a lot of reasons for it uh one of them is the of course this device that uh in ancient times in Greek was called an AF which is repeating the same beginning uh at the start of different sentences or Clauses we shall fight we
shall fight we shall fight that's what most people think of and they think of this of this but there's more going on there and real quick what does the repetition do for us oh we'll spend some more time on that but the repetition really captures the ear you know it
drives home the the the beginning and the end of a sentence are the most important parts of it the most the parts that tend to stand to to to ring in the ear the strongest and so starting repe sentences repeatedly with these words it leaves those words hanging in the ear
it's what you remember and you remember the some of the details about where the fighting was going to occur you remember it was the beaches you remember the others but what you remember is we shall fight well real quick I almost think of it like a soccer game where the game is
normally at a certain volume and then the announcers get really loud as you get close to a goal and I think of this repetition as being the announcer is getting really loud and the reason why I think of that analogy is you don't want the entire speech to be this kind of
repetition he wants this to be a main point to basically say you to to basically get you to a place where you're listening up to say this is important because those words at the end are the crucial moments that's when the goal is scored but through
repetition he's subliminally signaling to you listen this is important man I think that's a fantastic point uh I mean part of another way to put what you're saying it seems to me is uh that the ordering of words and and the uses of devices like repetition it can almost
work like punctuation would like an exclamation point would or like a or like a rising tone of voice would I mean this speech must have been amazing to hear it's amazing to read and one reason it's amazing to read is that by using the repetition of phrases it creates in
the ear this thing you're describing the same way that the the that's why it reminds you of the announcer because that you're hearing that not reading it but by reading this it creat some of that same feeling that the intonation would if you could hear it out loud it's
very interesting that way so uh this is this is a beautiful utterance for many reasons and it's it is surrounded by additional beautiful language that we can't all cover at once but one thing to notice about this is remarkable is it's 32 Saxon words in a row that that might not
sound like a lot but you go try to go write 32 Saxon words in a row it's not quite and to say something that worth saying it's not as easy as it sounds in English there's a natural I don't I don't actually know the ratio but there there's sort of a range of
natural ratios between sax Latin a words and ordinary speech and to go 32 words in a row with no Latin eight words now you might think oh he wasn't thinking about that oh he almost certainly was Churchill wrote about this he said I mean he wrote about rhetoric and he said
in English the oldest words the Saxon words are the ones that strike deepest and when you really want to strike deep you you stay there he said you don't use the recent entries into the language that came in here from French I mean the the funny part is the recent entries
came in you know only uh 8 or 900 years earlier right way too recent for us but uh but he knew all he cared about that and he thought a lot about it so when he wrote this I don't know if he was sitting there thinking gee which was the emology of that word nobody thinks about
atmology that's not the issue but he knew the sound he wanted he knew the force and strength he wanted he went back to the same well that the translators of the King James Bible went back to which is keep it very simple and very sax and the more profound the
substance is and it really uh creates a beautiful effect the profundity of the substance of what he's saying packed into these this long series of extremely simple unpretentious unimpressive words it's like the words burst at their seams you know very beautiful okay as long as
we're doing churo how about this never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few set in the House of Commons a few months after the uh uh the last one this is another of those things anybody who's ever read or heard this remembers it
this is said during the Battle of Britain where the where the few he's talking about our pilots in the air over Britain fighting off Nazi uh air Raiders it's a great piece of English for many reasons there's a lot going on here it's just like the last one where there's
there's a certain amount of repetition so much so many so few right uh that that's part of just as in the previous one we had an AFA with the repetition at the start of the different sentences but there's also another drama going on in here which is just between the kinds of
words he's using human conflict those are latinate French words they can become things like Humanity or um conflictual yeah right exactly uh was so much owed by so many to so few everything after that every word is Saxon right and there and it's mostly one syllable words so he starts out
never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few this is a technique that a lot of great writers have used tremendous effect which is starting out with setting up setting up the Run of very simple words that you finish with with something a
little fancier at the start to create that contrast it's it's sort of like you said with the the Football announcers is you don't want everything to be the same in rhetoric you want to set up the Saxon words with the non-s Saxon words so the ear has been hearing the other things
and it's primed to really be struck by the contrast when those words come in those little one syllable uh Stony Saxon words words there's something else I wanted to mention about this as long as we're talking about it that you're if if anybody who's made it with us this far
probably cares about words there uh so I wanted to point out of course the sentence is in the passive voice right it's a passive construction Oh by so many to so few you know you know you know something's passive when it either says uh it's owed by or you could add by
to to the end of it but in this case it's passive and you're reading so many books about English avoid the passive and whatever you don't use the passive it's the of bad writers of course sometimes it is but uh some of the most beautiful things in English uh have been
in the passive voice you know all men are created equal wow created equal you could put Buy on the end of that couldn't you you could they didn't want to make it active he didn't want to make this active either if he' made it active what would he have said never in the
field I mean because you could be imagine drafting thinking hm this is passive my editor has told me that I should never use passive constructions perhaps I should chck this you imagine the new Winston Churchill saying never in the field of human conflict have so
many owed so much to so few that would be non-passive you could say that wouldn't be as good because when you say it that way when you say it this way the many and the few are right next to each other with so much owed by and then what's left over is so many to so few so
you get that beautiful contrast and The rhythms better and different I'm not here to say the passive voice is this uh thing every people should use unthinkingly I just my view about the passive voice is just make sure you've got a good reason but that's what I'd
say about everything in writing there's no rule except make sure you've got a good reason for what you're doing as far as I'm concerned that that's the master rule I mean I follow all rules of style and grammar and encourage others to but if you need to break a rule well uh just
make sure you know why you're doing it yep all right ready for another bring it on back to the bible let me read it go every Kingdom divided against itself is brought to Desolation and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand one of the things that the last
one had that this one has too is a sense of contrast yep and you have black and white light and dark throughout the Bible as well and there was so many so few and here we have against itself let's see does this one have the cont TR in the same way or no well I think it does
but I mean let's put it this way does anything strike you as Saxon about this are there are there moments shall not stand is what I see right I mean so so so part of what you're part of what I'm trying to show show here is and in the last couple of examples have showed this is that in
English I said if you have to have one rule Let It Be prefer Saxon words to Latin a words but the great writers they don't use one rule they use Saxon old you know simple old-fashioned words and bigger ones and they mix them a little bit to create these beautiful Effects by
contrast so every Kingdom divided against itself is brought to Desolation why don't need to tell you that's Latin a it's got the Tio in right on the end of it right and same with divide it could be division right this is a fancier passage and every city or house
divided against itself shall not stand and this is also the King James Bible right all these Bible examples are King James Bible which has had such a gigantic influence on the on the language in such wonderful ways and we'll do an example right now in next
slide you're going to see the slides we don't use slides around here we use we use this school War all right just look at how the two halves of this end every Kingdom divided against itself is brought to Desolation latinate and every city or house divided against itself
shall not stand and it comes down to this close and that's a very classic rhetorical pattern is to it's it's just like the previous one where we talked about the field of human conflict is the latinate beginning and then never is so much been owed by so many to so few all
sax and saxs and SA same general idea here first say it notice how they sort of restate each other a little bit just on a different scale started out latinate but bring the sentence to a close if you're trying to think about advice for writing the idea would be
Saxon words tend to work better than latinate words to create forceful memorable Pros if they're properly arranged but especially at the end simple Saxon words are a great great way to end a sentence or a paragraph especially one that wasn't all that Saxon beforehand that then that
finishing that way really leaves an impression and those words really stand out because of the contrast and sound and style it's a very subtle thing people might not nobody's going to pause and think oh look at that you they finished with sax and words uh what what
they might just think is that was well said right yeah all right now I promised uh discussion of the influence of the Bible a great example is the influence of the King James Bible on Abraham Lincoln who read the Bible I more or less OBS the King James Bible
more or less obsessively that in shakes and Lincoln if you ask me was the uh greatest master of Pros we've ever had in our public life so it's very interesting to think about how did he get that way like how how did Lincoln become Lincoln and the answer is you
know thousands of hours of immersion in Shakespeare and the King James Bible how about that not not what you think of presidents spending their time on but that's what he was spending his time on right isn't that amazing it's amazing to think about now think about presidents
who are hold up with their uh Shakespeare and their Bible all right uh but look what he said uh this is right after Lincoln had received the Republican nomination for Senate in Illinois uh and slavery of course was the the the the the topic of the day so
this before he's president 185 before he's even running for president he's running for Senate against Steven Douglas it's going to be the this race is going to rivet the whole country it's going to set him up to run for president uh and he and he gets up after getting
the nomination and he says I do not expect the union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will seize to be divided it will become all one thing or all the other here I mean this is a very obvious example there there are a lot of interesting ones that are that are less
obvious of the influence of the Bible on the way that Lincoln wrote and spoke there's all these cadences and and and word choices and phrases that you can hear in his writing and speech are echoes of the of the of the King James Bible that he was reading all the time
and sometimes Shakespeare too uh the B his attachment of the Bible is better known but the Shakespeare attachment is we can talk about it later or uh another day but here you can just see he's basically quoting the excerpt from Matthew uh that we saw a minute ago
although there's another passage just like it in in Mark but it doesn't make any difference um again start at the end the most important part of a sentence is typically the end so you want to work back if you think about impact work backwards from the end of the sentence
it will become or the passage it will become all one thing or all the other okay the sax the classic sax and finish but it's more than that notice how he's basically repeating what he said Lincoln loved to say things twice we said at the beginning everybody in English speaks
two languages and he says it he says it first in it's like he says it first in this language then in that Lang imagine a politician who says it in Spanish and says it in English right like says it in latinate then he says it in Saxon because he's trying to appeal to the
mind and the ideals and then he wants to get you in the gut in the heart he wants you to feel it so he'll say I do not expect the union to be dissolved Union and dissolved are latinate I do not expect the house to fall that is Saxon and it's basically repeating the same
he's just saying the same thing twice once more poetically once more biblically but I do expect will cease to be divided latinate it will become all one thing or all the other it will cease to be divided is the same thing is saying it will become be become all one
thing or all the other a modern editor would probably cross one out you're saying it twice say I know I'm repeating it I'm speaking two languages I'm saying I'm saying in a latinate that I'm saying it again in Saxon yeah and that's what he did a lot and if you see his speech
say wow and church Shield do the same thing he'll say it then he'll basically repeat it when you think about you say you know those two sentences are almost saying the same thing this one's got the longer words and and the other's more words of one syllable it's more uh
picturesque maybe it's a metaphor but that's often what these really memorable speakers and Writers Do to create impact is they don't say it once they say it twice say it differently in different kinds of words that that appeal to different capacities of readers and
listeners how about that's a very useful idea when you're trying to think about how to get through to somebody you may have to say it in more than one language so Latin then Saxon and end with the Saxon yeah well just the alternation is is powerful that's what I'm trying to
say is that if you read simple books about how to write good English they'll just tell you prefer simple words prefer Saxon words and of course that's true as a preference but the really great effects aren't created by just going in One Direction they're created by
contrast By by mixing elements it's like in music You Know music is about chords aren't that interesting what's interesting is the chord change in music right and it's like that in in English I mean you can just stick to simple and you at least make a fool out of yourself
but if you want to get beyond that but beyond just being efficient to being memorable and eloquent you've got to be a student of contrast I think because that's what all the the great writers understand either instinctively or through study or or both is that it's is
is it anything that's great is tends to be greater when it's set off against what it isn't because that prepares the ear for it it lets you be struck by it you know we only really detect differences you know we we uh human creatures so uh Lincoln was a great
artist with differences and with writing language that use those differences to really uh create memorable stuff all right Oliver wend Holmes Jr said this in one of his opinions if there's any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it
is the principle of free thought not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate wow now so many people have said things like this historically but this is one of the expressions this idea that's really stood the test at time that's a
heck of a quote yeah people quote this they remember it but I just think about how many efforts there have been to express this idea why does this one rise to the top and I think it's it's there's a lot of reasons but one of them is just what we've been discussing look at How
It Ends remember always start at the end when you think about impact freedom for the thought that we hate wow that's a run of hard sax and words it's a great way to end especially with that last word freedom for the thought that we hate last word is the one that rings in
your ear he sets it up that way punch in the face right but then look what comes before that the beginning of this is is pretty latiny right principle Constitution imperatively right attachment that feels like the kind of writing I read in school right so you're
reading that and you're thinking I I'm I mean maybe you're being um uplifted by it but it's just like Lincoln he's starting out with this sort of uh more latinate wording that kind of appeals to the mind you really need to use your mind to get this right you got to think
about what he's saying because he's using Concepts and you got to translate the concepts into things that matter to you but then uh he restates it it is the principle of free thought that is the the he then restates and then he and he said let me boil this down to you in
Saxon language okay you don't want me to put it high futin ways let me put it this way freedom for the thought that we hate get it that's the principle I'm talking about I'll say it to in Saxon words and here you don't have to think about it it's not conceptual everybody
gets it immediately that's the thing about Saxon words they it's like you metabolize them instantly you know you talk about hate and um you feel it yeah you feel you feel that word you know where you use a Latin word like the difference the difference between uh uh
hate and and and hatred and enmity you know enmity means that but but you got to you got to think about it a minute you got to think about hate everybody knows what that means right in the gut and that's what that's what Saxon words tend to be like so you reserve them and
a so and so obviously the starkest word in the sentence is the last word in the sentence and so I say again why does this why why does this utterance hold up over time well Oliver W Holmes was a real Craftsman he was the son of a very uh famous literary figure in 19th
century America and Holmes is I think the best writer American law has ever had but he he uh had the most beautiful collection of judicial opinions but also letters if you want to study uh varieties of great English you sort of want to Apprentice yourself
to somebody who's worth it Abraham Lincoln's worth it you read Lincoln and you really think about how it sounds and why Al Oliver W Holmes is like that too if you like law he's somebody you could Apprentice yourself to you could think about why did he write it that way and
and you know Holmes didn't linger forever over his writing he usually wrote he writes standing up right may be wrri a draft and Le he probably didn't spend a lot of time on this he didn't need to he just grew up understanding it because he was immersed in the
environment and he had the genetic gifts of just extreme sensitivity and he knew by the time he said all this it was time to wrap it up at the end we just down to earth if you want to make your point sure yeah all right enough of that how about a change a subject we've been talking about sax
and and latinate words but if you study rhetoric which is my bag and this is uh if your readers enjoy this sort of thing they got a whole book they can read let me just do an Unapologetic plug for your book I never do this but I no I absolutely love your books they're so
simple they're so fun to flip through and everyone who's serious about writing should have definitely rhetoric and style just like lying over their house and you can flip through them I just love those books but David what about the metaphor I haven't read that one I just
really like the other two well I appreciate your uh putting in a good word for the books you said you could flip through them and it's very true I wrote these books to try to make them what I would call browsable reference books where you can pick it up and open
and learn from to enjoy it so it's not like if you get the book you got you got the prospect of I've got to go read 300 pages to get the point you can spend 10 minutes with it and you'll be 10 minutes better off in your knowledge of rhetoric okay enough about the books I want to
talk about a different rhetorical device than we have yet discussed it's called epistrophe and here we have an example from Lincoln so will you take it away the world will little note nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here so this
is Lincoln Gettysburg Address 1863 so this is 5 years after the ones that we were talking about earlier that's right uh it's 5 years later now we're not worried about the house being divided and in a civil war we're in a civil war and it's a few months after the Battle
of Gettysburg which is the bloodiest battle of the Civil War uh about 7,000 people are killed and and tens of thousands of others are maimed so he comes and he makes this extraordinary speech and if we wanted to look at this speech through the lens of the last
topic we could it's a very Saxon uh piece of piece of English but we've already talked about Lincoln and and and Saxon language let's just point out another thing going on here the world will little note nor long remember what we say here but can never forget what
they did here ending with here and here that's a device called epistrophe epistrophe means ending uh consecutive sentences or Clauses with the same word or words the same word or phrase it's sort of the opposite of anafa when we talked about that we shall fight on the
beach of speech that sheld did That's a classic case of anafa that's that's starting with the same words we shall fight we shall fight we shall fight this is the opposite it's ending with the same word good to have both tools because the start and the end of a sentence are the really the most
important positions in it for for for rhetorical emphasis now uh the ending if anything is more important because it's the last thing you hear when you for for purposes of that sentence and therefore it can ring in the ear so I think I that's why I always talk about starting
at the end but in any event Lincoln loved epistrophe and if you read him you'll see that he often comes back to this and the King James Bible likes it too there are some famous examples there but in this case combining the Saxon approach with the here here ending it's
a very resonant and it's in this case a very somber thing to say of course there's this little irony in it because uh the world has long remembered uh what what he said there and I don't know if it's remembered as well what they did
here so he may have had it backwards but it was a beautiful thing to say uh speaking of epistrophe I promise you that Lincoln liked it and that he used it elsewhere he even used it in the same speech that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of
the People by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth yeah well what's cool about this is not only is it the same speech but by the people for the people and then of the people before those I hear that all the time in government I actually didn't know that
came from this is this the original version of that uh more or less uh so uh you can find prior examples in this from Daniel Webster or um there are a couple of other examples that are discussed in the book of sort of predecessors to this like he probably heard people say things
a little like this and then he tweaked it a little and but the tweaks made a great difference and making it sound perfect and and then he added at the end the web the verion by Daniel Webster basically ended with the government uh with people and then he adds this shall
not perish from the earth so there's several things going on in this to make it great just like with everything all the other examples we've seen one is just the epistrophe the repetition at the end of of a people right government of the People by the people for the
people that's epistrophe three times uh follows the rule of three it makes it sound so beautiful yeah it's rhetorically perfect and then notice that after the epistrophe it ends with shall not perish from the earth uh which the earlier version by uh of a similar
statement by Daniel Webster and not done that perish from the earth that is a lifting from The Book of Job uh I think there's also a usage of that phrase in in Jeremiah but I think he he probably took it from job but this it's just an example of seeing the the King James
constantly work its way into Lincoln's Expressions even foror than seven years ago is a is a is an adaptation from uh biblical language I want to tell you about the only app that I used to read articles and it's called reader so tell me if this sounds familiar you read
something brilliant like an amazing quote the perfect article but then one day you go back you're looking to find it and it's just gone you can't find the thing that used to drive me crazy but then I found this app called reader and it's become the backup system for my
brain here's how it works so whenever I'm on my phone I'm on my computer I'll come across a new article and what I do is I just toss it into reader and then whenever I'm ready to read I can find all the articles pre-downloaded with no ads and no clutter but here's the kicker every time I
highlight something reader automatically saves it for me so then if I'm writing and I need that perfect quote that perfect example it's just right there waiting for me and because that I don't have to dig through old notes or endless browser tabs anymore and that means that
I can focus on writing reader is the sponsor of today's episode and look I got to love a product in order to promote it and I can tell you that I use reader every single day so this what I did I called up the CEO and I said yo will you give how I write listeners 60
days free and he said sure they got to sign up though at read wise. David Perell and there's a link in the description below all right back to the [Music] episode I me I mentioned people you can Apprentice yourself to uh Winston Churchill just like Lincoln has a claim
to being the the greatest user of the English language and the the history of English speaking uh public life uh not American but english- speaking and uh Churchill is somebody who whose speeches as well as his other writings really repay study he had a beautiful feel for
the language and he earned it by reading a lot of really extraordinary English when he was young but all depends now upon the whole life strength of the British race in every part of the world and of all our Associated peoples and of all our well-wishers in every land doing
their UT most night and day giving all daring all enduring all to the utmost to the end so it's 1940 and the British are facing down the Nazis and he's trying to inspire his friends including his friends in this country to step up and and help them
stay off the threat and I just want to point out in this that at the in the beginning uh there's some different techniques we could look at but I really want to focus on the epistrophe and the anaf at the end right because that's what sticks in the ear is how to I you
probably don't remember very well with the first half of that but the last the very ending it's very dramatic it's like the the uh the Football announcers as you might right the rhetoric is always in the second half of the sentence not always in the English language but
basically in all the examples that you've given us uh there's a lot to that the the um there are some examples of the other way around and and th those who uh can't get enough of examples can can find them in the book but but but this is but you're right it's a very
classic pattern it's not the only one but it's it's it's very classic so giving all daring all enduring all the classic repetition Thrice of something in using epistrophe to the utmost to the end see he reverses from epistrophe to an Afra he goes from repeating at the
end of each Clause to a couple of rounds of repeating at the beginning it's a great effect and it's just another example it's like moving between latinate and Saxon words moving between repetition at the end to repetition beginning changing with repetition occurs that kind of contrast really
brings device to life that's really what I'm I'm trying to emphasize there are a lot of principles in English like prefer saxs and words but those uh the power behind those principles is really at its best when it's combined with contrast which is prefer Saxon words but set them
up repeat at the end but then repeat at the beginning right sure it's because it's the mix it's the back it's the chord change that really grabs the ear the ear is really grabbed by difference and these are different ways to beautifully create difference all right
here's a more modern example we doing a lot of uh link and and uh chill how about uh Lloyd Benson so he was he was the uh this is just for fun but he was uh senator from Texas and he was on the Democratic ticket in 1988 oh that's great and uh the you know Vice he was the Vice
Presidential nominee uh with uh when Michael Dukakis was the Presidential nominee and vice presidential debates are so boring and nobody ever remembers them this may be the only memorable thing I can remember from any vice presidential debate we
still talk about later uh Dan Quail was the Republican candidate and poor Dan Quail because he got him he got posterized by uh Lloyd Benson but uh he had been saying that although he'd been criticized for not having enough experience in as a legislator uh to to
be in this position he said well I have about as much as John Kennedy did when he got elected and so Lloyd Benson he goes says Senator I served with Jack Kennedy I knew Jack Kennedy Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine Senator you're Know Jack Kennedy yeah and so the house erupts and uh and now
uh this ends up being the only thing anybody remembers from the debate which may which may show I mean you compare this to the kinds of debates that Lincoln and Douglas had I'd rather be in Lincoln Douglas land but still you can see some rhetorical skill here and it's
basically an epistrophe I mean this is a very memorable insult if you want if you want to give a memorable insult well uh ancient Greek rhetorical devices can be very useful in that way in this case it means ending successively with Jack Kennedy but it's not even just that it's
a little better than that I serve with Jack Kennedy and knew Jack Kennedy then he reverses it Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine right and and beginning and it's much better that way than just having Relentless epistrophe epistrophe then relief then back to it because the ear
wants it it wants that repetition back right it got used to it here and then you started here and now you return to it and it creates that satisfaction which is why everybody who ever saw that can still remember it it's not just because it was harsh and sort of funny
it's because it was constructed in a way that really satisfies the year feels like a rap battle yeah a little bit like that yeah between between two late 1980s politicians anyways uh I just wanted to show that this example is a little more modern a little more accessible it's all
the same basic rhetorical tools used for different reasons maybe to inspire people maybe to move them to tears maybe to make them laugh or knock somebody else down yeah oh yeah or or or or or indeed embarrass somebody and and and and and make them hard to elect uh but
uh you know it's a game at which both sides can play but in any event okay uh David I think we spent enough time on up history don't you let's move on let's move on I've got another Tool uh that's very practical very interesting very useful this one's known
as the Kay asmus now I know you've talked about this before the classic kaym I know you've talked about this before with uh other guests but let's see if we could say something uh about it that that might be useful and that you haven't yet covered ask not what
your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country the most famous famous example of Kay asmus probably in English is from Kennedy's inaugural speech in 1961 the issue to me is it's easy to admire a Kay asmus and say well isn't that pretty very memorable but how
do you make one huh I mean because how do you know when it's time to make one I mean you can't make one out of anything it's not like everything you said if I said David why don't you talk to me on kazmma for the next five minutes it's not going to work only certain kinds of
sentiments or or things you'd want to say lend themselves to this rhetorical trick what is the trick it's reversal it's it's basically an think of it as an A B ba a structure so you've got a elements on the outside and B on the inside so it's going to be not what your
country can do for you what you can do for your country so the a part would be country that's on the outside the inside of that casmus would be U right these are the B elements so it's country u u country A B B A okay uh that's the basic structure of a Kay asmus what kinds of
things that you might ever want to say would be Clues to you that you know maybe I could frame this as a Kay asmus but there are certain occasions this chose one of them which is you're trying if you're trying to tell somebody you've got it backwards right you got the wrong
end of the stick it's the other way around anytime you're thinking those thoughts you can think aha this is the kind of rhetorical soil in which a Kay asmus might grow so you can think how can I express how they have it backwards by Framing the elements in terms of you
say it's da but it's actually D you can try it that way and you can try other rhetorical methods a lot of these kosmas could be expressed asist with epistrophe if you want to rephrase them but I'm just saying that's a clue I think when you're trying to get the hang of using
rhetorical devices it's very helpful to learn about the different occasions like for different kinds of things you might want to say they tend to lend themselves to these kinds of of patterns and then you can smell it you can say okay I get I'm trying to say this kind of thing
that's the kind of thing you can use this for if you don't have any of those patterns in mind it's easy to admire these devices but it's hard to figure out when to or how to ever put them to work once you have a sense of what the right kind of thing is that lends itself
to this much easier so with that one the lesson is I'm trying to communicate opposites I'm trying to show that most people think a but I want you to think B so because they most people have the relationship backwards it's not just they think one thing they should think
another it's they think it's a to B but it's actually B to a they got the it's the other way around what they think they think the country owes them something it's not like that they owe the country something they've got it backwards you you're mistaking who owes what to whom you think I owe you money
you owe me money right okay right right now that's that's using epistrophe yeah do I owe you money you owe me money right if you want to make a Kay asmus how' you say it right you think the money is owed from me to you it's so from you to me right that that' be the
chastic way to express the same thing but you I'm just pointing out you can translate the you got to wrong you got they got the wrong way around you can translate that in these different patterns that are all attractive if you care if you're writing a screenplay or
you're writing a situation where you want somebody to have dialogue that really crackles uh what you'll find is it's got a lot of these patterns woven into it so you got to be sensitive to when are you trying to say something that could lend itself to a pattern how
about that um I think it's been too long since we had a line from Lincoln uh probably 10 minutes I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me so this Kay asmus again huh don't you think yeah so I'm just
trying to figure out why this one this JFK one is more memorable to me than that one like this I can hear once and boom remember that one would take a little bit of effort and JFK he says ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country so what
makes this one more memorable than that one what's it it might be the context or or the substance of what's being said and we but but if we're just focusing on the English I would just point out that is a pure Kay asmus it's um country you you and Country this one's not a literal
kaym it's I events events me it's sort of a conceptual Chasm it's got the elements going from I to events to events to me and I and me are the same person so it's a kmus in that sense and it has that same nice ring but it's kind of a half Kay asmus uh you might say and
whereas uh that is a very literal one and so it's it's easier for the ear to be delighted by that although I think it's they're both pretty delightful actually but that's that's even more striking and of course it's it's very short um and it's saying something that
at the time was considered a very meaningful thing to say so all these things chip into the fame of that utterance and and that utterance is sort of like Lincoln talking about government uh of the People by the people for the people that's the the uh this example
from Kennedy too had antecedence before he ever said it Oliver W Holmes had said something like it and so had um uh Kennedy's boarding school Headmaster but anyway there's nothing new Under the Sun uh here's another kmus I want oh I wanted to uh just keep talking about
occasions for a kmus here's an example it's is possible for a man to know something without having been at school as it is to have been at school and to know nothing from this beautiful novel called Tom Jones by Henry Fielding I just bring this out it's a it's a um uh
it's an attractive piece of English but partly to say there's more than one occasion for a Kay asmus like I I said earlier that if somebody has it backwards they got it the wrong way around your country doesn't owe anything to you you owe something to your country
then that might might lend itself to a rhetorical device maybe a Kay asmus there are others too uh for example anytime you've got give and take I do this for you you do this for me you could have it anytime You' got kind of mixup where you've got things miss or out of alignment you can recite the
elements in a way that can lend itself to like Kay asmus where you can say is this possible to know something without having been at school as it is to have been at school and to know nothing notice again not a pure Kay asmus right what are the inside elements of the kmus
let's see uh possible to know something what happen me at school is it would have been at school and to know nothing so school is the interior part of the kayas it's the be the outside of it is something and nothing not the same word but the same you're referring to the
same thing which is how much you know and they both have thing in them right it's some thing right no thing so maybe it's three4 a kmus but you see what I mean you can have a Kay asmus that's structural rather than literal and you can still get some of the benefits in
your e in the ear or in the mind from having the pattern line up that way it can be pleasing even the literal is often the nicest but it's not always possible uh just because the way English works you can't always you can't put I and me you can't put I in both places
it's got to be I and me because that's how we speak English but you can still it can still resonate in the ear and that's the point of the of the of the technique okay and now our last example back to where we started okay the Bible oh yeah The Lord's Prayer okay
and lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from Evil now you might never have thought of this as a kmos but it kind of is huh that's that that's why I wanted to show this to you because it's not a classic kiasmos where you've got the same words uh we've got AB B ba and
the A and the a are the same word and the B and B are the same word but look but watch right and lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from Evil where could the kmus be look at the simple words on the outside and what do we have in the middle latinate words
it's a combination of our first lesson and and this new theme in the middle you've got Temptation and deliver which are the fancier words on the outside you've got uh and lead us not not into but Deliver Us from Evil so it starts and ends with these very simple words
and in the middle you've got the longer ones and notice how it kind of retraces the substance which is you're being not led into temptation but delivered from Evil so you go into the mix of The Long Word and then you come out uh at the end with the simple word it's it's it's a
very beautiful passage and I'm just trying to point out that a kiasmos as I say can be something that works more conceptually than literally it's a subtler thing but it's part of the reason why every Everybody remembers this there's a lot going on but that's
part of the lesson is you take memorable things and you slow down long enough to really take them apart or x-ray them think what are the elements what are the patterns under the surface of this that make it sound so great people don't sit
around thinking about how impressed they are by your use of a technique if they notice the technique it's bad technique what they might do though is be struck that's well said I mean once that's said that way who wants to try saying it any better than that why do people say that
why people ever say that well they set most of the examples I've given you are people have said that about for a long time and if you slow down and look at them you can see there are patterns and usually more than one that these sentences follow and that's one reason
why they stand out from the crowd and there and then people still talk about them and admire them and are impressed by them a century or two after they're said so can you do this for me can you just give me a quick rundown of the three techniques that we've spoken about we started with
Anglo-Saxon we spoke about epistrophe we talked a little bit about anap and then we got to the end we talked about kiasma so just give me the okay the postgame debrief okay sure uh so in English there's usually two kinds of words for anything that the fancy one and the
simple one the fancy one we call derived from Latin or French and the the the simple one we call Saxon and lesson one is generally prefer Saxon words you want to make your Pros stronger go through it look for words that are fancy change them to Saxon it often makes a big
difference but uh you can do better if you want great rhetorical effects you got to think about your choice of words and how the choice over here affects the choice over there how the use of fancier words over here means it's time for simpler ones cuz your reader's ear is
going to get tired the bigger ones or you can use the bigger ones to set up that s that that that finale where you got the Run of short words that are very simple very easy to picture that get you in the gut and you end with those and they ring in the ear that's a rhetorical
technique that a lot of the greatest masters of English have used extensively so that was one tool another is an AFA or a which are fancy old Greek words for very simple ideas which is repeating a word or a phrase at the beginning of several sentences in a row or more than
one or phrases but at the start of several things you say epistrophe is repeating at the end so Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech very famous use of an Afra I have a dream I have a dream just like we shall fight we shall fight starting the speech with these
with these uh repeating ideas or finishing with it of the People by the people for the people same idea uh but just at the end of the sentence and the last tool we talked about is Kay asmis which is basically taking the sentence the structure of a sentence and
reversing it so you've got a B but then B A and you've got these a elements on the outside and these B elements on the inside and we saw those can be literally words like you have the a elements could be an identical word and B and that's like your country you you and your
country but we saw there a bunch of other ways you can take those elements and and use them uh to express it's very helpful to be sensitive to the kinds of occasions or substantive things you might want to say that that call for a certain rhetorical pattern so in the
case of a kosmus there are several that I mention including um somebody has something backwards they have it the other way around the idea of and vice versa anytime you're anytime what you mean to say is and vice versa you probably could write that as a kiasmos
if you if you stared at the situation long enough it would it would come to you in that way or that there's a mismatch it's like I think Mark Twain once said uh the problem with life is that uh first we have the uh capacity to enjoy it without the chance and then we
have the chance without the capacity oh wow that's a great thing to say but that's a beautiful Kay asmus and that's a literal one whenever I hear something structured that simply it also sounds more wise it's not just memorable it's more wise it the very fact of it being memorable and
so beautifully compressed in like a nice little jingle makes it have the Hue of wisdom or something so so this is a good thing to know from the standpoint of all sword and shield I think right because uh it's very true that when you when you when you state something very eloquently
or in a kayus where it seems like a closed loop it's very tidy it adits of it admits of No Interruption or objection uh it can really make what you say sound more true uh The Shield part is beware because things that are beautifully said sound more true no reason to believe
they are and I think part of the reason you study rhetoric is to inoculate yourself against the charms of people who put things beautifully and you don't want to be fooled into thinking that means they're right then again they might be but but they're two different
issues what we've seen in a lot of these examples is people using beautiful rhetoric to advance beautiful causes you know you've got you've got Lincoln in the Civil War Churchill in World War II the translators of the Bible attempting to express the word of God uh in all of
these cases you've got rhetoric being put to work to inspire people in certain ways and the combination of that substance with the rhetoric is a is is a beautiful thing and heightens it but of course you can use these tools for other ends in bad ones and so I think the
study of rhetoric in part is to make people more conscious and aware of the choices they make when they write and how they can by really taking a close technical patient interest in how they construct a sentence or a paragraph make it more memorable more striking to the
ear more sound more persuasive but also to be aware of the fact the other people are doing that people on the other side are doing that too and you got to be very careful about letting rhetoric trick you into thinking that the the more beautiful it sounds the more true
it is it ain't necessarily so so we've spoken about Churchill speaking to the Brits the Gettysburg address these Grand big topics of course we need rhetoric oh my goodness the people my nation my great nation they need to be inspired they need to listen up but how about
just very practically in my work in a love letter letter to a friend maybe love letters aren't that practical but uh in just day-to-day life how should we be thinking about using these rhetorical techniques well uh first of all sparingly uh I think um it's it
these P these patterns are as you said it's like an announcer getting excited it's like an exclamation point these patterns call a lot of attention to the pros that they that they structure and so if you use them a lot it can sound like you're trying too hard to sound
impressive it's that that's sort of a staple of bad political speeches is the Relentless use of too much repetition where you feel like L lay off uh so I think a sort of subtle or gentle use usually is the the best way to use these devices and also not even I I've talked
about how a Kay asmus might sort of be suggested by certain kinds of situations but a lot of this I think is if you just immerse yourself in these examples I mean part the reason I write these books partly is to collect beautiful examples that you can read internalize study
think about but you don't imitate them I mean anybody imitates anybody sounds like a fool I I and I don't think that's how this ever Works think go back to Lincoln Lincoln learned how to write like Lincoln by reading the Bible by reading Shakespeare uh we we this this this is
what we know but he never imitated them you never read them and think oh look at a l trying to sound like the Bible look at a lincol trying to sound like Shakespeare that never happens cuz we never he would never imitate he had to write like somebody from his times just
like we have to write like people in our times if you read good stuff it can sort of gently influence what your your ear thinks is is an attractive way to say something that's where Lincoln learned we can do some of the Same by reading Lincoln not to imitate Lincoln but just
to sort of soak in his instincts because and the another reason Lincoln's so important for this is I think studying old examples is great I think the best writing of the of the you know 19th century is beautiful stuff a lot of people and maybe including a lot of
viewers might think that stuff seems very boring they use too many endless sentences Arcane language well Lincoln's a really good counterweight to that because if you read Lincoln he's not like that at all nobody thinks of Lincoln is being pompous writing purple
Pros trying to impress anybody being rhetorically seeming fancy Lincoln has a reputation of being very plain but he was also rhetorically very sophisticated because as we've seen yes he was very plain but look at all the patterns and artfulness in the way that he would
deploy his words so he's a great example in that way he shows you that there's a way to be a a beautiful writer about very important things even in private life I mean a lot of the examples in the book from Lincoln's letters he said what about a letter I've got lots of letters
in the book of people using it just to express themselves what they personally mean about something in a way that's memorable to their immediate audience uh you you asked where does this get used in life now so I think understanding the Gettysburg Address is important and
valuable even if you never planned to be writing or delivering a Gettysburg address cuz it's just a lesson there's it's it's a lot of lessons in how to arrange words so they're striking so they're memorable everybody everybody wants to write words that are striking
and memorable if you're writing on Twitter or writing a Blog you're competing against millions of people who are doing the exact same thing and the question is even and and you might even be expressing a lot of the same ideas they are how can you express whatever worthy idea you have in a way that's
worthy of it hey look a little kaym it get a half km I'll take a drink to that it's just water but you know I got to I got to do a toast that was pretty good cheers is that the end of your answer I think that's the end of my answer okay so you're a professor and if
you were teaching next semester at UT a class on writing and you said these are the things that people need to focus on these are the main lessons I want to teach besides what we've spoken about today how would you structure the curriculum what are the main things that
you would teach well let look if you're trying to learn how to write lesson one is just learning to do it efficiently it's got to be extremely concise you've got to have an allergy to wasted words and really know how to scrutinize a sentence to make it as clear and easy for the reader as it
can possibly be it's like learning how to draw before you try to become a painter you you've got to be able to do that and so all the books that tell you about omitting needless words and and and how to structure a paragraph that stuff's crucial my interest is in lesson
two because I think for a lot of people they education and writing basically ends after lesson one good writing is the most efficient writing end of story that's what I think is is the sort of ethos behind most books on writing your goal is to be clear and concise that's
the end well of course those are everybody's first goals but you can be clear and concise and mesmerizing inspiring and memorable or clear and concise and tedious and boring and nobody cares uh many people are clear Lincoln was clear and concise but many
people are clear and concise and few most of them aren't Lincoln so what did he know beyond that he must have known something else cuz he was more than clear and concise and the question is what else did he know so for my class and I've taught you know rhetoric
classes and part of what I like to do is after we've gone over the basics have students actually imitate have them rewrite um sometimes modern Supreme Court opinions as Oliver wend Holmes would have written them that's a very interesting exercise it's not because
you want to go around imitating homes cuz you'd sound like again you'd sound like a fool but if you have to imitate you've really got to get in there and listen if you want to imitate somebody's writing you really got to understand it you got you got to listen to it very
carefully you're not going to sound right so you've really got to get in there understand what made homes sound like homes what were the signatures of his style that made him so amazing so you read this think about it and then eventually your imitations get better
and then you throw away the imitations you don't imitate anymore but look at what you've learned Yeah by by having to do that so IM imitation is actually a very useful thing memorization imitation these things are underrated we've talked a lot about my writing examples project
and whenever I write one of those I always write out the quote I never do copy and paste because as you write out the quote you begin to see what's going on in the writing in a way that you can't just by reading yeah I agree I mean anybody can look at a piece of good
writing and say wow that's impressive okay but the question is can you understand why and then learn something from that about how how to write yourself to me that's the the great question when you study good writing or it ought to be it seems like it rarely
actually is when when people take courses on this but that's how I would do it and that's how I try to do it in the books I've I've written when you talk about imitation there but then you said earlier that you don't want to be imitating other people's Styles how do
you divorce those two ideas I try to separate imitation from influence that's what I meant when I was disc talking about how Lincoln read the Bible and Shakespeare he wasn't imitating anybody but it still affected him and that's what I'd say is say it so it's natural
to you nobody's writing sounds right unless it's B in my view writing sounds best when you're basically speaking the words onto the page when it when writing has voice in it and it sounds like a real person saying something and talking to you that's the first thing it's got
to sound natural so if you force your writing to follow some other rhetorical idea or somebody else's writing style it's never going to sound right it's got to sound like you so how do you make you and the way you speak your authentic way of expressing yourself more eloquent and
impressive and I the answer is you just gently immerse yourself in good examples of people who are constantly talking that way that's I think that's the idea is is you eventually write and speak what you read to some extent you also write and speak the way your peers write
and speak and that's a counter influence and right now by the way it's often a very bad one that's the issue I think is that one reason you study rhetoric in good English is to give yourself a break from the lousy rhetoric in English that
you're surrounded by in social media I mean social media is like a campus where rhetoric is taught it's not taught well my opinion Yeah by in other words it's taught by bad example yeah thanks Ward that was that was really fun you know what I liked about it it was a lot like
our breakfast conversations the only thing we're missing was the crappy diner coffee I want that next time I wish I'd had that like the little white mugs who we're sitting there at the same table you know the waitress we're just back there you know nerding out on writing I
listen I like that coffee but but I'll let I'm but I'm going to let it go you really care about coffee are you from the you're from the West Coast right yeah people out there care about coffee I like a good cup of coffee you know I'm going to use your rhetorical techniques
to sell a good cup of coffee um so I totally enjoyed this I'm I'm really honored that you uh decided that I was worth it and I also got to say I'm so impressed by the quality commitment of this this is high-end and I think God bless you for trying to take this topic
that we both love which is words and give it the classy treatment it deserves it's just wonderful it's just a great thing you're doing man and I'm so I feel like it's a real real honor to be have anything to do with it thanks man thank you well for anyone who listens to this
and is like I want more of that you know we only focused on three techniques and these books rhetoric and style classical English style classical English rhetoric they're part of a series these are the two that I love and especially this one about style the whole book you can just
open up to any page and you just find examples and if this is your jam and you listen to this conversation you're like okay I want to learn about that well this your book all right David thank you it was wonderful to be with you that was good fun all right