Let’s use classical Greek techniques for arranging words to punch up business writing. Let’s consider parallelism and the isocolon. In parallelism, the writer or speaker makes his point with coordinate grammatical structures. The isocolon is a parallelism with the same number of words and even the same number of syllables. Here are examples:
His purpose was to impress the ignorant, to perplex the dubious, and to confound the scrupulous.
It takes a licking, but it keeps on ticking!
Let’s take tedious prose and sharpen it radically with an isocolon.
Commonplace text:
The President has been criticized on several fronts, both domestic and international. Critics have asserted that his poorly constructed tariff policies have hurt domestic consumers. Others have said that having sometimes violent ICE agents in the streets has impinged on Americans’ civil rights. Finally, he has been accused of an overly hostile foreign policy towards traditional US allies.
Text with an isocolon:
According to critics, the President has thoughtlessly hurt American consumers, unfairly policed American protestors, and recklessly threatened foreign collaborators.
I have created a parallel structure. In the list, I have aggregated an adverb, verb, adjective, and noun in referring to different actors: American consumers, American protestors, and foreign collaborators. I also tried to maintain the same number of syllables within each of the parallel structures, except for “collaborator”, which has five syllables. But there is a constant ending -r. To make a perfect isocolon, we could substitute “associates” for “collaborators.”
The first sentence is tedious, could be produced by AI, and has 58 words. The second sentence is striking; crafted by a human; and has 20 words.
I can teach you to arrange words with grace, so they adhere in the reader’s mind. Given how awash we are in information, you must keep your message dry and ready. You can transcend AI banalities.
Ready to get to work? Set up an appointment with me at yourcommunicationscoach.com, and let’s get to it.
