The Elements of Eloquence
How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
Ratings12
Average rating4.2
15
How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
Ratings12
Average rating4.2
'An informative but highly entertaining journey through the figures of rhetoric ... Mark Forsyth wears his considerable knowledge lightly. He also writes beautifully.' David Marsh, Guardian In an age unhealthily obsessed with substance, this is a book on the importance of pure style, from the bestselling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon. From classic poetry to pop lyrics and from the King James Bible to advertising slogans, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase - such as 'Tiger, Tiger, burning bright', or 'To be or not to be' - memorable.In his inimitably entertaining and witty style he takes apart famous lines and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde. Whether you're aiming for literary immortality or just an unforgettable one-liner, The Elements of Eloquenceproves that you don't need to have anything to say - you simply need to say it well. 'Sparkling ... the book offers many pleasures ... I laughed out loud' Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph
Reviews with the most likes.
Fun reading that will enhance your ability to write and read. The chapter on versification alone is worth the price of admission. One caveat - the second half of the book is different from the first half; particularly, I wondered why the author didn't bother to explain and sound out the rhetorical terms in the beginning, as he does in the end.
A fun read for when you're a little tired of fiction and want to obsess over language.
The experience of reading this book was both completely enlightening and completely maddening.
Let's talk about the good first. I've never learned much about classical rhetoric, so it was kind of a revelation to get such a quick introduction to some of the analytical vocabulary of phrasing. I'd never really understood why the study of music was part of rhetoric in classical education, and this book opened up the similarities between some speech devices and the small details of melodies and progressions.
The bad is that Forsyth uses an extremely regular structure, where a hybrid phrase is used as both the last example in a chapter and the first example of the next. This is clever the first time, and increasingly monotonous as the book goes on.
The ugly...ugly? Maybe that's too harsh. A warning: Forsyth adopts a tone that is somewhat playful and irreverent, part mockingly self serious. I appreciate the attempts to include a fairly catholic assortment of examples from both high and low culture. This hipness by being too cool to care about being hip backfires as often as it lands, giving the impression of, as a New Yorker writer said of Malcolm Gladwell, “a young person's idea of an old person.”
If you love language, and aren't turned off by ironic mansplaining, I highly recommend it.
