WRITING WITH ELOQUENCE

2 Little Tricks to Make Your Writing Standout

And the most powerful is a flawed original

Facial symmetry is a critical factor in attractiveness.

We prefer balance. And yet, no face is perfect. There are always flaws and blemishes. Which we accept with thanks, for there is something odd about a face manipulated to perfection. Don’t you think?

Symmetry in words can be nice and neat. I refer you to palindromes, a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forwards — civic, radar, level, rotor, kayak, and madam.

All rather lovely.

The longer they are, the less obvious they become — rotator, deified, racecar, reviver.

Until we end up with the ridiculous saippuakivikauppias as listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest palindromic word (19 letters) — it’s Finnish for a dealer in lye (caustic soda).

When we extend these to sayings —

• Madam, I’m Adam
• A man, a plan, a canal, Panama
• Able was I ere I saw Elba

They begin to irk. There is a cost to being a perfect mirror image. It’s not natural. We raise a distrustful eyebrow.

And the same applies to symmetry in writing.

Reversible Rhetoric

Billy Ocean rather jauntily told us, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” and this is an example of antimetabole.

Antimetabole is a figure of speech in which a phrase is repeated, but with the order of words reversed. It frequently appears in pithy aphorisms —

• “I don’t live to work; I work to live.” — Noel Gallagher
• “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” — Hippocrates
• “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin

In a sense, antimetabole is a palindrome of words. It firmly embeds a phrase or question in the minds of an audience. And it can be stirring in the right circumstances.

Consider asking your friends to rally around to help with an injustice you want to right. “How about we all go down to the mayor’s office and complain?” They are more likely to stop off at the Dog and Duck for a pint or two.

But, if your friends were the three musketeers, they would stick with you if you called them to action with, “All for one, and one for all.” — Alexander Dumas.

In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy used the masterfully constructed antimetabole “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

It’s a compelling call to action and still resonates to this day. Imagine if he had said, Stop being so ungrateful, it’s about time you mucked in to help.

Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? That’s why my mum doesn’t feature in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Antimetabole has left and right symmetry. Balance. It’s devoid of flaws or blemishes. It can be perfectly beautiful, but often it is the perfection that gives us a sense of unease.

We need something more natural. There’s no true human beauty in total purity. In writing, we are much more comfortable with the nonuniform. We like rebellious quislings. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Chiasmus.

Chiasmus is a two-part sentence or phrase, where the second part is a mirror image of the first. Thus, all antimetabole is chiasmus, but chiasmus, unlike antimetabole, works when the words are a conceptual inversion.

“I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

— Emiliano Zapata

In that one sentence, the Mexican revolutionary expresses his resolve to challenge his country’s dictator and repression by the landowning classes. The chiastic arrangement beautifully encapsulates the weight of his words.

Chiasmus allows for greater flexibility. It can reverse similar ideas while not being constrained to using the same wording.

Shakespeare was adept at using simple antimetabole —

• “Fair is foul and foul is fair.” — Macbeth
• “Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.” — The Taming of the Shrew

But he excelled in his use of chiasmus —

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

— Shakespeare (Hamlet)

He uses “true” in the first clause. Rather than use it again, he uses “canst not then be false” — which means the same as “true” — and balances the sentence. They serve as bookends to the message.

The reversal pivots on “and it must follow, as the night the day.” He didn’t need to add “as the night the day,” This operates as a simile and forces the reader to pause and ruminate on the wisdom of the words.

The power of chiasmus

When researching this article, I looked at dozens of examples. And I kept nodding. I’d read or heard them before. I didn’t know about Emiliano Zapata, but I recognised his quote.

I’ve never read Hamlet, yet I’ve heard the quote many times. It is incredible how many of Shakespeare’s words are in common use today.

I’ve often thought —

“The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don’t know.”

I didn’t know it was Albert Einstein who first said it. The man who understood the fabric of the universe still had a keen sense of humility. And whether or not he realised it, he used chiasmus.

Chiasmus is a truly powerful device. The symmetry gives the words emphasis. The emphasis makes it persuasive. When we are persuaded, our minds are changed and that makes for something memorable.

So how do you turn your regular sentences into captivating art?

You have done the first part. By learning about it, you are halfway there. Now you can recognise antimetabole and chiasmus when you see them. Stop and take note.

When I was writing on Quora, I finished one answer with, “It’s okay to be uninformed, it’s not okay to be uninformed and have an opinion.”

It received many positive comments. People liked it. Probably because it is almost chiasmus, but not quite. It doesn’t follow the formula below. I gave it some thought and played around with the words —

• “Silently uninformed is okay, but it’s unacceptable to be ignorant and loud.”

It follows the chiasmus formula, but I’m not sure it is any better than my original. I tried again —

• “Without knowledge stay silent for it is disquieting to hear ignorant opinion.”

I like it, but it’s a bit highfalutin. I’d be interested in which of the three resonates with you the most.

The lesson I took from trying these is it isn’t that easy. I’m no Shakespeare. I know that because Shakespeare rather succinctly said what I was trying to say in an antimetabole —

“Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”

— William Shakespeare, (Twelfth Night)

And another example of the same sentiment he said with chiasmus —

“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.”

— William Shakespeare, (Hamlet)

To harness the power of these rhetorical devices in your writing, you need only follow the structure. Antimetabole and chiasmus follow a specific pattern.

We can describe the basic structure of antimetabole:

A — B x B — A

Here’s what each element represents:

• A: The first word or phrase in the first clause.
• B: The second word or phrase in the first clause.
• x: The point of reversal where the structure crosses over.
• B: The second word or phrase in the second clause, mirroring the corresponding element in the first clause.
• A: The first word or phrase in the second clause, mirroring the corresponding element in the first clause.

Thus you can have —

• “It’s not the men in my life; it’s the life in my men.” — Mae West

Whereas the basic structure of chiasmus is A — B x B* — A* where the star indicates a similar concept. Thus you can have —

• “It’s not what you remember that’s important, it’s the significance of what you never forget.” — Malky McEwan

Malky McEwan

This article is part of my Writing With Eloquence series where you can discover things like the Beast of Rhetoric and other Mini Mysteries.