Turns of phrase …

… Book Review: ‘The Elements of Eloquence’ by Mark Forsyth - WSJ - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

“The Elements of Eloquence” is billed as a “how-to” guide, designed to teach readers the secrets of the perfect turn of phrase. But it has a broader purpose: to stimulate interest in the rhetorical devices we use every day, often unwittingly, to animate our speech and writing. Some of these are familiar from high-school English class: alliteration, hyperbole, paradox. Others, though, sound like medical complaints. There’s syllepsis, which involves using a single word in two or more ways with incongruous effects. Thus Dorothy Parker, on the smallness of her apartment: “I’ve barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends.” There’s the sandwich effect known as diacope: Othello’s “Put out the light, and then put out the light” or Martin Luther King ’s “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty we are free at last.” And there’s epizeuxis, a form of immediate repetition exemplified in British prime minister Tony Blair ’s insistence that his government’s chief priorities were “Education. Education. Education.”