Here Lie Great Sentences—And Hope For Humanity
Jan. 31, 2025
Let’s hear it for writers.
As Frank Bruni wrote in his opinion piece for the New York Times on December 26, 2024, “To read what some of the most talented writers can do is to be reassured of human ingenuity, human sensitivity, human spark.”
Human ingenuity. Human sensitivity. Human spark. Things we could all use a little more of, eh?
Here are a few of the ingenious, sensitive, sparkly sentences Bruni gathered for our collective awe. No surprise, many of his selections focused on US politics.
Sam Harris in his blog on the reluctance of then President Biden and his closest advisors to end his re-election campaign: “They are not merely courting disaster now—they are having tantric sex with it.”
Dan Rodricks in The Baltimore Sun on presidential debates: “Donald Trump saying he won’t debate Kamala Harris a second time is the Thanksgiving turkey saying he won’t be available for Christmas dinner.”
Kevin Williamson in The Dispatch on Donald Trump’s America: Trump is a funny kind of patriot. He loves America – except for the cities, the people who live in the cities, about half the states, the universities, professional sports leagues, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the legal system, immigrants, the culture.”
And lest you think it was all politics, all the time, here are few bon mots about other things—restaurants, movies, and aging bodies.
Jay Rayner in The Guardian reviewing a new restaurant in Paris: “We push vegetables aside in desperate search of tail meat. It’s ‘Finding Nemo,’ only without a redemption arc.”
Priya Krishna in The Times poking fun at the “crustacean pretensions” (as Bruni put it) of a Manhattan restaurant: “Servers boasted about how the langoustines – dressed in garlic, parsley, lemon and butter, with a subtle, briny undertow – had flown first class from Norway that morning. The less exciting shrimp cocktail may have gotten stuck in economy.”
Justin Chang, in The New Yorker, musing about the opening of “Dune: Part Two”: While the screen is black, a heavily distorted voice hisses something that we recognize as words only by the grace of subtitles: ‘Power over spice is power over all.’ The rare newbie to the Dune-iverse may be confused: Is this a story of cumin bondage?”
And finally, Dan Neil in The Wall Street Journal lamenting on the difficulty of trying to squeeze his aging body into a low-lying, physically inaccessible car: “After a lifetime of swiveling and gyrating, my pelvis has left the building.”
Now I know most of you do not set out to dazzle people with your brilliant, creative prose. But neither should you condemn your readers to Snoresville.
If the primary aim of most business writing is to get people to act—to approve your scope of work, confirm your approach, choose your firm over another, commit to partnering—then you need to be persuasive.
Persuasive language is easier than you think. It’s not about using long sentences, labyrinthine structure, or ten-gallon words (like “labyrinthine.”)
On the contrary, language that persuades springs from simpler, more basic things.
1. Persuasive language connects with its audience.
To connect with your audience, you first have to identify your audience. (Hopefully, that’s not a surprise!)
Writing coaches often tell us to take a moment to actually picture the person we’re writing to— our boss, our colleague, the CEO, the chair of the condo board, the busy president of the university.
When you consciously write with a real person in mind, you sub-consciously establish an emotional connection. In Aristotle’s famous “rhetorical triangle,” this is the “pathos” side, one of three ways to appeal to an audience.
2. Persuasive language is clear and concise.
I still find it curious that many of us—intelligent, verbally articulate people—seem to transform into robots the minute we put pen to paper.
We get tangled up in long, complex sentences. We use archaic, multi-syllabic words. And we embed our main point somewhere in the middle of this mess, like a buried treasure waiting to be unearthed by only the most dogged of hunters.
Persuasive language rejects all that and instead uses common, everyday words that readers can instantly recognize and understand. Persuasive language also has an underlying intent and structure. The writer knows where they’re going and takes the reader by the hand, guiding them through their communication with each and every sentence. This is the “logos” or “logic” side of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle.
3. Persuasive language has personality.
In the business context, “personality” largely stems from being clear, concise and conversational. Real, not rote. Human, not robotic (see #2 above).
But having personality also means allowing what you stand for to shine through. How much personality depends on what you’re writing. An op ed piece for a news publication should express a clear opinion. But even a proposal can tell readers what you’re like— by saying something like, “In our experience, …” or “As we learned on our last project, …”
In Aristotle’s triangle, this is “ethos”—elements of speech that reflect on the author’s character, and in particular, show the author’s credibility or trustworthiness.
I’ll give the last word today to A.O. Scott, a critic for The Times Book Review. Here's Scott writing about literary allusions: “If our brains are foundries, they are also warehouses, crammed full of clichés, advertising slogans, movie catchphrases, song lyrics, garbled proverbs and jokes we heard on the playground at recess in third grade. Also great works of literature.”
Remember this:
Persuasive writing is the art of using words to influence, motivate or persuade an audience to take action or agree with you. According to Aristotle, persuasive language uses pathos (emotion), logos (logic), ethos (character), or any combination of those to make its point.