I've been slowly working through Ed Yong's An Immense World—a magnificent overview of the world of animal senses (and how mightily they differ from ours), and was bowled over by a technique he deploys in a section about how the amazing touch sensitivity of sea otters helps them locate food on the sea floor: Imagine … Continue reading On connecting reading time with real world events
Category: Wordplay
On blogging (almost) every day so far this year
On January 3, I published a post on being a "sucker" for resolutions that included a fateful and rhetorical question: What if I wrote a blog post every day? Oh boy. Here we are, just over halfway through the year, and I've found myself plugging away at this strange resolution. Technically, there are plenty of … Continue reading On blogging (almost) every day so far this year
On subordinating style sentences and additive style sentences
Stanley Fish's little treatise How to Write a Sentence is an enjoyable read—maybe not the rigor that one would expect, given the instructional title—and it had several nice nuggets of insight. One of those is the rough distinction between "subordinating style" and "additive style" sentences. As Fish frames it, the subordinating style "orders its components … Continue reading On subordinating style sentences and additive style sentences
On isocolons
I wouldn't say this is a rhetorical device, in that it's not argumentative. But an isocolon sure can make something sound good. An isocolon is a parallel structure, where multiple phrases contain the same number of words or syllables. Usually, isocolon appear in two, three, or four parts. A famous example in advertising is the … Continue reading On isocolons
On correctio and apophasis
Correctio is a sneaky rhetorical gambit: you say something, stop, claim you made a “mistake,” and correct yourself. Clever speakers know that even when you retract or amend a statement, you’ve still planted the idea in listener’s minds. The correction stands not on its own but as a concept linked to the “mistake.” It’s not … Continue reading On correctio and apophasis
On synonyms
In reading about rhetoric, I'm confronted by an uncomfortable thought: Every word you use should be there for a reason. As a writer who works in first drafts and rough edits (!), you can understand why this thought made me panicky. I don't dedicate that level of attention to my writing, though I wish I … Continue reading On synonyms
On the odd joy of used book sales
I’m not sure if there’s an event I love more than a used book sale. Getting more books on the cheap is the main draw, obviously—but there’s also the oddball browsing experience. With no time to assert the order and coherence of a library or bookstore, the books at a used book sale are jumbled … Continue reading On the odd joy of used book sales
On two types of people claims
There are two types of people—those who think humanity can be evenly split in half over some preference or behavior, and those who do not. I grimaced a little writing that. The “two types of people…” trope often pains me when I see it. But I get it! It’s a great conceit. Categories—even if they’re … Continue reading On two types of people claims
On the rules of scientific naming
After looking up so many trees and plants last week, I was struck with a question: What’s up with scientific names? Binomial nomenclature, or Latin naming, as it’s widely known, is the naming convention that provides each species with two names. (Bi as in “two,” nomial as in “name.”) In the example Homo sapiens, Homo … Continue reading On the rules of scientific naming
On ploce
There’s an incantatory magic to repetition. I’m tempted to deploys ploce here and prove my point—but that would be a little on the nose. Ploce is repetition of a word throughout a passage. Unlike epizeuxis, where a word repeats in sequence, ploce is the appearance of a word in multiple places without specific spacing constraints. … Continue reading On ploce
Taylor Coe 