Month: August 2024

I want to make a list of tools to write. I hope to use and share the tools of speech.

That was written in iambic pentameter. One of the tools of speech.

Here is a list of others helpful rhetorical devices.

Iambic Pentameter	Da DUM, Da Dum, Da DUM, Da DUM, Da DUM five pairs of two syllables and with the stress on the second. For example: “to be or not to be, that is the question.”
Allilteraion	Use the same letter for works in a phrase. The tables have turned. Cool as a cumcumber.
Tricolon	Lists of three. Blood, sweat and tears Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Eat, drink and Be Merry. Veni Vedi Vici
Epizeuxis	Repeat a word Fly Fly Fly!
Diacope	Repeat a word but break it up with another word. Bond, James Bond. Fly, my pretties, fly! A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.
Zeugma	Using a single verb for multiple phrases: My blood sugar fell dramatically and so did I Tom like whisky, Brad vokda, and Nick crack cocaine
Chiasmus	Using a structure like A B B A Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure Despised if ugly, if fair, betrayed Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
Anadiplosis	Repeating the last word as the first word of the next clause Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering
Anaphora	Starting each sentence with the same words. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
Epistrophe	End each clause or sentence with the same word or phrase. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that amore. When the worlds seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine, that amore. Also Obama speech – where he said yes we can after phrases.
Merism	referring to parts rather than the whole: ladies and gentlemen – instead of saying audience
Isocolon?	Roses are Red. Violets and Blue. To err is human, to forgive is devine. A time to be born, and a time to die. (although Wikipedia speaks about it more generally again repeating a word or syllable – symmetry and parrallelism)

For further examples and information, check out the elements of eloquence by Mark Forsyth.

It’s time to learn the key to make you great.

I wrote that sentence in iambic pentameter.

And I used ChatGPT to help me.

I recently listened to a podcast with Mark Forsyth, author of Elements of Eloquence. He discussed improving one’s writing using iambic pentameter.

If I challenged myself to use iambic pentameter more often – would it make my writing more memorable?

So I thought I would give it a try. I thought I had written something using the iambic pentameter, but I wasn’t sure. So I used Chat GPT to give me a feedback.

It turned out that what I wrote was not.

ChatGPT analyzed it but gave me feedback on how to improve it.

Sometimes, people use ChatGPT to write things for them, but the writing comes out stilted or generic sounding. But perhaps, writing something and then asking ChatGPT to help you rewrite it with constraints can improve the end product.