How tiny is tiny? How huge is huge?
How small is small? One-third the size of a ladybug? The size of a sprinkle on an ice cream cone?… Read the full article
Metaphor
Give numbers context
How can you help people see 6,000?
When 6,000 power poles went down in Arkansas during a series of ice storms, Entergy Senior Communications Specialist David Lewis needed a way to make that number tangible in an executive speech.… Read the full article
Turn populations into people
Help readers see a classroom of children
Compare the impact of this statement …’
“Each day, we lose 30 children to gun violence.”
… to the impact of this one:
“Each day, we lose a classroom of children to gun violence.”
Tough nut to crack
Put your story into a nutshell in the nut graph
If I came to your house and told you to grab your things and follow me, how far would you go?… Read the full article
Come to your senses
Analogy helps readers experience your story
What does an epilepsy seizure taste like?
That’s the question Paul Harding answers in this passage of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers:
“Howard had epilepsy.
… Read the full article Revive a cliché
Extend the metaphor to make a worn-out phrase new again
Call it a cliché makeover.
Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, breathes new life into old, worn-out phrases in his 2006 letter to shareholders.… Read the full article
Analogy makes him great
Rob Kapilow makes Mozart meaningful through metaphor
I don’t know an adagio from an allegro. (Although I have been told that my andante needs to accelerando if I want to keep up with my husband in the airport.)… Read the full article
Master of metaphor writing
PNNL science writer shows how to communicate complex concepts
When Pacific Northwest National Laboratory science writer Tom Rickey wrote a release about the lab’s work “Making dams safer for fish around the world,” he didn’t get lost in the scientific gobbledygook.… Read the full article
‘Keeping to the shadows’
Caravaggio in extended metaphor
In Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, Andrew Graham-Dixon compares the artist to the light lights and dark darks of his paintings.… Read the full article
Your brain on metaphor
People have always learned through analogy
When my grandfather first saw a car, he didn’t think “automobile.” He thought, “That’s a carriage that moves without a horse — it’s a horseless carriage.”… Read the full article