Metaphor

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

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.”

“Information is absorbed in direct proportion to its vividness,” says Diane West, president and co-founder of 2Connect, a presentation-skills training company.… Read the full article

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.)

But composer-cum-comedian Rob Kapilow helps even musical illiterates like me appreciate classical music.… Read the full article

Captivate your audience

Three ways to make your copy more creative

“Nobody ever sold anybody anything by boring them to death.”

— David Ogilvy

Ogilvy was right.

If you want someone to buy what you’re selling — whether you’re pitching products and services or positions and ideas — you must first engage them.… 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