Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
—Lord Byron
I want to persuasively sting you, the student, writer, speaker or business person with the idea that your diligent use of 100,000 Plus Power Phrases will measurably improve the clarity and effectiveness of your writing and speaking. Herein are phrases able to charm the minds of teachers, editors, audiences, and customers; and concepts which, when correctly applied, will happily echo with a positive resonance on your report card or in your bank account. This book works. I used it to help write this introduction. The way I used it may not be the way you use it, or even the way I use it the next time. Just as there is no absolutely right or wrong way to write, there is no absolutely right or wrong way to use this book. I offer my technique only as a challenging example. Your technique, to be successful, must bear the impress of your individuality.
Once I had established my writing goal, I flipped through the chapter entitled, “All Kinds of People in the World,” where you will find the possibility of interchanging more than one thousand adjectives with more than one thousand different person-nouns. That makes more than a million different kinds of personages, from an abrupt abductor to an uptight zoologist. My aim in perusing that chapter was not to create characters for a story or a novel, although that is one of its many possible uses, but to open my mind to the joy of creating and writing. As I scanned those pages, words began to connect. I wondered what might be the politics of a goose-stepping polygamist, and I pondered the gall of a trailblazing mudslinger. I reasoned that conciliatory cannibals offer to eat only their captives' toes, and I wished there were a way I could locate and interview a dandified, scheming litterbug. I made a note about maybe writing a story entitled “The Whistling Psychoanalyst,” and perhaps another called “The Hitchhiking Sleepwalker.” Torpid ideas reawoke and dormant mental muscles began to flex. What we think molds the words we use, and the words we use react upon our thoughts. A study of words is a study of ideas, and a stimulant to deep and original thinking.
Use this book to jump out of those old ruts. I am a student and a writer and a speaker; and I know what it's like to be stuck. My vagrant thoughts have formed an almost independent career. Teachers have read my work and sobbed, and all I could offer for their tears was a thin tissue of dull excuses. How often my listless and unstrung mind has allied itself with a poverty-stricken imagination to produce nothing but protracted agony for an unsuspecting audience! But here is a gold mine of rich concepts able to transform our writing and speaking from a burdensome chore into an exciting and creative enterprise.
Students, use this phrase book. The work your teacher once thought of as mere speculative rubbish from a smirking goofball in the last row, she suddenly will find refreshingly novel. Listen to me, and tomorrow her whimsical smile will replace yesterday's stony stare. Your grades will improve!
Writers, use this phrase book. Two centuries ago, phrase books were esteemed as supplements to dictionaries. They have temporarily lost their place, but they have not, in any way, lost their value. All the great writers have been diligent students of words. Shakespeare crafted his words to embody his thought with crystal clarity. Samuel Coleridge once said of him that one might as well try to dislodge a brick from a building with one's forefinger as to omit a single word from one of his finest passages. You will improve your vocabulary by a careful study of words and expressions, as furnished in this book, where the words can be examined in their context. In my opinion, there is no better way to develop the qualities of clearness, emphasis, and precision in your writing, and to improve and enlarge your intellectual powers generally, than by regular and judicious study of selected phrases and literary expressions.
Speakers, use this phrase book. Every speaker's aim is to be heard and understood. A scintillating, crisp articulation holds an audience as by the spell of some irresistible power. The choice word and the correct phrase are instruments that may reach the heart and awaken the soul. Focus your message with the phrases in this book, as the student and writer would. You understand the importance of properly clothing your body when you speak in front of a group. Is it not even more important to take the time to tailor your thoughts with the expressions that fit your thinking? Once you have dressed yourself and your concepts for your speech, use the “Public Speaking Phrases” chapter to help you deliver your message with a smooth framework and a pleasing cadence.
Speaking of speeches, I missed a call from my wife last week while I was out to lunch. When I called her back, I got the answering machine. I could have left a cold and uninspiring message, but instead, I turned to the “Striking Similes” chapter and left these words: “I'm sorry I missed your call, Sweetheart. All day, thoughts of you have been buzzing wonderfully in my mind. I can't wait to get home, where I know your love will fall around me like sweet rain.” Some of the most effective (and shortest) speeches are made to an audience of one.
Business people, use this phrase book. It will not be long before you are expressing your distinct purpose and precise needs with accomplished ease.
Thank you for staying with me on that digressional excursion. Before we changed trains of thought, I was explaining how I used this book to write this introduction. Let's get back to that. After I used the “All Kinds of People” chapter to break out of the grooves of monotonous intellectual habit, to make myself laugh, and to galvanize fruitful and stimulating ideas into life, I turned to the “Helpful Phrases” chapter and wrote down, on separate note cards, all the phrases that seemed relevant to my intentions. I found about forty in all, shuffled the cards, and arranged them in categories. Then I took my German shepherd, Wookie, for a long walk.
On that walk, the idea of comparing the construction of good writing to the building of a strong house occurred to me. We wouldn't want to invite our friends into a poorly constructed, haphazardly furnished home, would we? Why then, do we so frequently invite the reader into just such a piece of writing? If I heard the beams creak, watched the ceiling sag, and felt the floor buckle, I'd want to get out of that house fast, wouldn't you? Can we blame the editors for putting down our manuscripts? In this analogy, our teachers and editors are building inspectors. Thank God someone is there to protect the public from our shoddy craftsmanship!
My neighbor across the street has recently built the most beautiful home on the block. He carefully chose some of the finest, most cost-effective building materials for the foundation, superstructure, and roof. How much time do you spend selecting the expressions that form the basis of your thought? And how much time selecting the phrases that complete your ideas? How willing are you to cut corners with poorly formulated concepts?
The inner dimensions of your writing are just as important as the strength and look of your outer structure. My neighbor has artfully combined some new things and some old things to adorn the interior of his home. He accommodates his guests, as we should accommodate our readers and audiences, in an atmosphere of unassuming familiarity. Once his guests feel comfortable, how easy it is to entertain them!
Resist the tendency to use this book to show off. Readers will recognize gaudy embellishments for what they are. The garish interior decorator avails himself of impressive and expensive objects, but his combinations most often produce a disordered, mongrelized effect instead of a feeling of warmth and distinction. We all should avoid using words whose meanings or correct applications we do not know. You will confuse and lose most of your readers with long, labyrinthine sentences, and who but a zombified literary cretin will be willing to follow you into a phraseological quagmire? Be honest and straightforward. Don't preach to your reading or listening audience, communicate with them. “No noble or right style was ever yet founded but out of a sincere heart,” John Ruskin said.
When I returned from my walk with Wookie, the skillful and relentless squirrel chaser, I set aside about half of my note cards of “Helpful Phrases” as too tangential to my purpose, and looked through the “Prepositional Phrases” chapter. There I found some phrases that would help me reemphasize an important point to you: good ideas do not materialize by legerdemain; they are disgorged by perseverance. Let me give you an example. A familiar college English assignment frustrated my daughter, Lisa. Her teacher, Mrs. Smith, instructed the members of her class to open their themes on the subject of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex with their thesis statements. Lisa searched through the 100,000 Plus Power Phrases until she found the mental muscle she needed for her essay.
In class the next day, Mrs. Smith asked the students to read their thesis statements aloud, and then to listen to criticism from the class. The first ten students did not do well. Their inventiveness seemed dead, their thoughts, befogged, and their language, obtuse. Lisa's turn came and she read her thesis aloud. The teacher responded to it, as she had eight or nine times before, by numbed rote, “Okay class, what's wrong with that as a thesis statement?” Nearly a minute of silence followed, and then a young man spoke up, “Mrs. Smith,” he said, “There's nothing wrong with that thesis statement.” Mrs. Smith asked Lisa to read her thesis statement again, and she did: “Oppressed by destiny, Oedipus relentlessly seeks the truth, only to reap a harvest of regrets.” If you know the story, that sums it up. Simple, concise, and direct. “Words are like sunbeams,” someone once said, “The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.” Lisa aced that paper and the course, not by magic, but by working to find the right phrases to fit her own ideas.
After I listed about fifteen prepositional phrases that I might use in this introduction, I wrote the first draft with my assorted note cards spread in front of me. Then it was time for me to heed the words of Jonathan Swift:
Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head, and bite your nails.
As I scratched and bit and read and reread my first draft, some sentences seemed overdone. I decided to delete some, including this one: “All of your gifted intelligence, gushing enthusiasm, glowing anticipation, headlong vehemence, and ranting optimism will get you nowhere with the reader unless you give him what he really wants— not hackneyed statements, but a pleasant flow of appropriate language which graphically portrays what you honestly know, feel, think, and imagine.” Also, since the purpose of this book is so obvious, I thought it unnecessary to tell you that you are free to use as many of the phrases as you like in your own work without worrying about copyright infringement.
I decided to add a sentence about the “Getting Down to Business Phrases” chapter because it is so unlike the others. That chapter is there for me and for people like me who sometimes think too much and take half a day instead of ten minutes to write a simple, two-paragraph business letter.
I made a special point to flip through the “Literary Expressions” chapter, found some clarifying concepts there, and grafted them into this introduction.
After I completed my additions, deletions, and corrections, I presented this to the members of my family, to my neighbor across the street, and to a creative writing teacher at the community college for suggestions. My wife wanted me to include a description of how our daughter, Beth, used the “Striking Similes” profusely and successfully in an open-ended high school English theme (In five hundred words, write about what you are like), but I couldn't find a way to work it in. I incorporated most of the other suggestions, and set my work aside for a couple of days.
When I picked it back up, I read it aloud and modified some awkward connections. Many of the phrases which I had originally thought were part of the very structure of my writing turned out to be scaffolding—essential to the building of the framework, but out of sight when the job is done. I then asked myself, could I identify the thesis? Yes, in the first paragraph, “This book works.” Did I present a clear, effective message? Yes, I think so. I am not promising that now your every sentence will blaze like the flash of the Saracen's scimitar on the sun-soaked, medieval battlefield, or that soon your work will burst with volcanic suddenness into literary prominence, but I am saying that this book will sharpen your mental faculties and significantly improve your writing and speaking, if you work at it.
Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr
Annapolis, Maryland
September 2000