“Like Apples of Gold”
“LIKE apples of gold set in silver filigree is a word spoken in season.”a So said wise King Solomon, and few people would dispute with him the accuracy of that statement. The well-chosen word, spoken at the right time, is a work of art in the same way that a beautiful ornament of silver and gold would be. Few people realize, however, just how much goes into good expression and how necessary it is to choose words that will make the maximum impact on one’s audience.
Words are, of course, used to convey information and ideas from one person to another and so anybody who has a message to convey or an idea to get across should be interested in improving his powers of expression. Whether people will listen to him or not is largely dependent on how he expresses his thoughts.
Now we all realize that great works of literature are read and reread by their public in exactly the same way that great musical works are listened to over and over again and that the information is thereby impressed on the mind of the hearer by repetition. Most educated people have heard of Shakespeare, for example, even if English is not their mother tongue. In addition, most people tend to retain what they have read with pleasure. So if we wish to make a point or convince someone of something we should try to make our language as effective as that of those ancient authors.
The great literary critics, such as the Roman Horace, Aristotle the Greek or the Englishman Samuel Johnson, studied the works of others to find out what made them memorable reading, and their findings can be of great assistance to us.
For a start, all concur that good writing is not easy. Samuel Johnson said that what was written without effort was generally read without pleasure. Furthermore, they all agreed that we must do more than just tell a story or convey certain facts, unless our report is to be entirely functional. We must also touch the heart.
To do this our own attitude is most important. Are we really interested in that subject? One writer said that if you wished to make him feel pain, then you must first feel pain yourself, and in this way your language will have the genuine ring of truth. By involving our reader, amusing him, informing him or even shocking him, we will capture his interest and thus stir his emotions.
There are several basic things to be borne in mind in order to do this: the purpose of writing, the audience one is addressing and one’s choice of expression, called one’s style.
The Purpose of Writing
It is evident that if our intention is to amuse or entertain we will use a style radically different from that used by one who is trying to explain a complicated scientific fact to a nonscientific audience. Similarly, a person who is trying to convince his hearers of a vital religious truth does not want them rolling in the aisles with mirth.
However, it would be a mistake to imagine that what is written to instruct must necessarily be dull, or that because a person is telling a fictional story he cannot convey a great truth thereby. Many fictional works have had great social impact by placing a typical and sympathetic character in a certain situation and so calling people’s attention to the injustices inherent therein.
The works of the great French writers Flaubert, Balzac and Guy de Maupassant not only entertain but also can be considered as social commentary. People knew that slavery was wrong before Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but not until they read the book, suffered with Uncle Tom and began to understand the sad plight of the Negro slaves in America were they moved to action.
On the other side of the coin, what is written to inform does not need to be boring. A Roman writer named Virgil wrote a series of works on agriculture called “The Georgics,” and if one has had the happy chance to have learned Latin, today one can still enjoy his lovely little section, all in verse, on beekeeping. He realized that an illustration drawn from an entirely different subject could enliven a discourse whose purpose was merely didactic and that humor was by no means out of place in, say, a scientific article.
Horace, a very practical critic of the first century before Christ, said that either a writer “tries to give good advice or he tries to be amusing—or he tries to do both. . . . A mixture of pleasure and profit appeals to every reader.”
In illustration of this point, one of the best-loved speakers on astronomy for the BBC in England a few years ago almost always started his talks on the night sky by talking about his garden and what the rabbits were doing to his lettuce. And throughout the course of the talk he would tell small jokes and stories, actually but distantly related to his subject, in order to retain the interest of those who had not been trained to think scientifically.
He realized that, although his primary purpose was to convey facts, his secondary one must be to do it in such a way that the people would want to know them; and since most people were not beamed in, so to speak, on the scientific wavelength, he adjusted his style accordingly.
The Audience Addressed
Yes, it makes a great deal of difference to whom we address our words. A letter to an aging aunt on the subject of her ill health is going to be quite different in tone, style and composition from a letter to a prospective employer stating one’s qualifications for a job. In the latter case facts count, in the first, warm human feeling.
Are we talking chiefly to men or do we hope that women and children will be attracted by what we have to say? Or are we addressing an international audience? Plainly, we cannot cater to everyone all at once, and some people have a natural penchant for one subject or another. Yet it is possible to give even technical subjects more universal appeal and thus reach a larger audience.
If we are addressing an international gathering, then by all means let us use illustrations from different lands. Bear in mind that on all continents points of view on basic subjects are not the same. Suppose, for example, we were trying to convince young people of the dangers of immorality. Well, we would, of course, remind the young girls of the shame attached to unwed mothers. However, have we also considered the African continent where most girls are expected to have produced a child before they marry as proof of their fertility, and where not only is this not thought a shame, but in some cases it is viewed as an honor? Frequently a man will refuse to marry a girl until she has produced a child. Many millions of people think in this way, so we need to bear such things in mind as we write.
Another example might be the technical article. Unless it is written solely for an audience with an advanced scientific training and is intended for reference, it is rarely any use filling it chock-full of facts and figures, especially in the first few paragraphs. Women almost always avoid, like the plague, articles containing a lot of numerical facts, as a glance at any magazine designed solely for women will reveal. They seem to like numbers only in knitting patterns! People from African and Asian countries, where the emphasis is more on human relationships and less on technology, find straight scientific information difficult to absorb. And honest truth to tell, there are very few of us who can enter into the enjoyment of the elderly math professor bent over a page consisting entirely of equations who looked up, chuckling, and said, “I say, he writes very well, doesn’t he?”
So suppose that we were writing a letter about the Kossou Dam in Africa. We could start off, perhaps, by eliciting our reader’s sympathy for the people living in the villages nearby who, up until now, have had no running water or electricity and for whom the dam will be a blessing. Or, conversely, perhaps we could get him worried about the bad effects these dams have on the populace due to the increase in water-transmitted diseases. And then, afterward, we could slip in those rather indigestible facts as to how long or how deep it is and how many tons of fish it is expected to produce.
Then, finally, having captured the interest of our reader, we will want to retain it, and that will depend, to a large extent, on our manner of presentation.
Manner of Presentation
First, we can vary the framework into which we put our information. We might write a straightforward documentary, counting on the facts to speak for themselves. Or we might present our ideas in the form of a dialogue, as did Plato or Aristophanes, each of the persons representing a different point of view. Or we might write a play or story and by the way in which the various characters end up show what we think of certain situations. Sometimes in a play a chorus on-stage can comment on the action as it goes along to bring out the point, as they did in Greek drama. Sometimes it is even more effective to let the action speak for itself. Some fine works were done almost entirely in verse, as was the book of Job.
Secondly, the actual words we choose will affect our audience. The critics all agree that we must be simple and brief but varied. Aristotle rated purity and clarity very highly and Horace pungently advised the budding author to throw out the paint pots and the words a foot and a half long. By that he meant that we should not be too flowery nor use long, erudite words that nobody understands.
Although we might wish to ornament what we say, there is absolutely nothing to beat the simple, straightforward style. Too many words, too elaborately said, might even confuse our audience and give them the desire to leave off reading. Look at the example of John’s biography of Christ. It is a model of simplicity, John’s style and vocabulary marking him as an ordinary and unlettered man, and yet his Gospel is considered the most moving of the four.
One of the first aids to simplicity is brevity, but being brief is a lot more difficult than one might imagine. Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, wrote to a friend, “I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.” And poor old Horace said, somewhat ruefully, that it was when he was trying to be brief that he became unintelligible!
He was, however, full of bright ideas as to how we could do it. For a start we should prune out the unnecessary words and repetitious phrases—get rid of the fuzz, so to speak. Although the information should be complete, it should also be compact. Clarity comes from stripping down to the bare bones of the idea and making it stand out in the same way that one person on a stage will hold the attention more easily than a group.
This simplicity and brevity that the great writers advocated does not mean, however, that we cannot be varied. There is no lack of interesting words, nor of interesting ways of expressing ourselves. We have many fascinating examples of different styles in the Bible, for example, and we would do well to imitate some of them.
There is the poetic diction of the Psalms; the dramatic style of Habakkuk; the vivid imagery of Nahum, who speaks of the flame of the sword and the lightning of the spear; the pithy, epigrammatic style of the Proverbs; matter-of-fact, concrete language in Jonah (he certainly had no need to embellish that story!); or the conversational, everyday speech of Christ’s parables. In exposing falsehood we might use an ironic style, as did the apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, subtly showing their ingratitude in setting up their “superfine apostles.”
Our motive is, of course, important. We might ask ourselves whether our words will affect our reader, his outlook on life, his work or his relations with others. Are we hoping to arouse good or bad thoughts by what we have written? Are we going to present an immoral person as our hero and try to excuse wrongdoing, or will we support, perhaps, a theory that is in contradiction to the Bible?
No matter how well written a book might be, if it is to promote an idea that is in conflict with good morals, then it will not please the true Christian. In fact, such a book can be a danger, for if it is written well enough it may seduce people into thinking bad thoughts in much the same way that fine writing can also encourage good ones.
Finally, having said all there is to say, the rest lies, as Terentianus Maurus once said, ‘in the hands of our reader.’ As a final illustration let us take the case of that famous king who appreciated the value of the right word spoken in season. He wrote one of the most beautiful love poems of all time in which he pleaded with a young country girl to be his. He told this Shulammite girl that she was like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun. But where did all his fine words get him? Nowhere!
The girl was in love with her shepherd and nothing Solomon could say could change that. As far as the Shulammite girl was concerned he was wasting his fine language and his time. So it is the right word, not only at the right time, but also to the right person, that counts!
[Footnotes]
a Prov. 25:11, New English Bible.