The Extraordinary Power of Writing

This post is taken from my new course, Better Business Writing Skills Level Two, co-produced with Philip Fiske de Gouveia. I hope you enjoy it.

The Extraordinary Power of Writing

Writing is an extraordinary tool. It allows us to communicate ideas across time and space. To people we’ve never met, who live on the other side of the world, or haven’t even yet been born. But it’s also much more than a just a functional tool.

You know how when you read something really good? It’s as if the words on the page take on a life of their own. They become like music. Writing isn’t just about what words mean. It’s also about how they sound.

As children learning to read, we say the words out loud. We’ll often sing those words in the form of nursery rhymes. Throughout our lives, we take pleasure in conversation. In performance. In words and sentences that have a musical value.

When your words sound pleasant, it helps to engage the reader. If they’re enjoying themselves, they pay closer attention. There’s practical value in this. In ancient times, before we wrote things down, it helped people to remember – and to pass on – stories from generation to generation.

The word ‘euphony’ describes this musical quality of language. It comes from the ancient Greek word ‘euphonos’ which literally means ‘well-sounding’.

How about these lines from Hamlet by William Shakespeare:

To be, or not to be - that is the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep –

No more – and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to.

It can be challenging understanding Shakespearean language. Sometimes it takes a few goes. The point is that even if the meaning is not immediately clear, the words themselves are like music. We enjoy hearing the sound of them. Good writers work to understand and then enhance this euphony.

This isn’t a course to help you become the next Shakespeare. Heaven knows I’m not qualified. But there are lessons for us all in this. Variety is the spice of life, and the same is true in writing. Let’s look at variety in terms of words, sentences and paragraphs.

Variety: Words

First, it helps to vary the words we use. In the Level 1 course, I spoke of the importance of using the most simple word possible. So using ‘use’ instead of ‘utilize’, for example. But there are limits.

Remember in school when your teacher would tell you off for using the word, ‘nice’ ALL the time? ‘This is nice’ ‘That was nice’ ‘He’s nice’ ‘She’s nice’. Nice, nice, nice. She was right. You need to introduce some variety.

Look to this:

‘I went to the big house. Then I went to another big house. Next to the second big house, was another big house. I went there.’

It sounds like it’s been written by a rather bored computer. Let’s look at it again but with a little more variety in its word choice.

‘First, I went to the big house. When I was done there, I strode along the street to another, this one equally as impressive. Beyond it, was a villa of similar style and proportion. This was where my journey would end.’

Now, it’s not exactly award-winning but, the variety of sounds - of language - makes the second paragraph more satisfying. Rather than simply repeating ‘big house’ and ‘ went’ over and over again, we’ve introduced other words and phrases that mean the same thing.

Instead of ‘big’ we have ‘impressive’, ‘of similar style and proportion’. Instead of went, we have ‘strode along the street’, ‘where my journey would end’.

See how I’ve not just replaced a word with its synonym, but I’ve thought about how to rephrase the sentence to keep the meaning but to add some colour. This is vital way of adding interest to your work.

When you read your work out loud – and you should always read your work out loud – listen for repeated words. Your reader will notice them to, and not in a good way. Give it some thought, and change them.

Variety: Sentences

You need to add rhythm and pace to your work. This means varying the length of the words you use. It also means varying the length of your sentences. If you don’t, your reader will get bored.

It’s a trick I’ve been using already in this course, probably without you noticing. Varying the length of sentences makes writing easier to digest. It also reflects the way we talk to each other as human beings.

Sometimes I’ll use a fairly long sentence, using a number of different words and phrases to say what I want to say. And sometimes I won’t. Varying the length of your sentences – and so changing their rhythm and pace – helps to keep your writing fresh, and it keeps the reader interested.

Listen to a good speaker and you’ll find that at some points they are more engaging than at others. There are highs and lows. Their rhythm gets faster and slower. This is directly related to the length of their sentences. Long ones slow everything down, while short ones speed everything up.

I’ll end this with a paragraph from one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated writers. Someone who really understood how to please his reader, American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The hotel and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach were one. In the early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and cream of old fortifications, the purple Alp that bounded Italy, were cast across the water, and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows.

That’s ‘euphony’ for you. It’s perhaps more than a little over the top for an annual shareholder’s report, but it illustrates the point. The more variety and colour you add to your work, the more engaging it will be. ‘Euphony’ generally means a happier, more engaged reader. And a happier reader means our writing is more likely to achieve its objective.

Take Aways:

• Euphony describes the musical quality of language.

• Introduce variety into your work by varying the length of your words and sentences.

• The more engaged your reader, the more likely your work will achieve its objectives.

Click here to find out more and enrol in my new course, Better Business Writing - Level Two.

Happy writing,

Mark