A Way With Words

Do you have a way with words? Do you know how to take a mundane phrase and kick it up a notch? It’s really not that hard, it all depends upon the words you choose. The words should paint a picture, they should also be simple everyday words but ones that have “pizzaz”!

Here is an example from an article in the September 2014 issue of Vogue. Writer Nathan Heller sprinkles his article with phrases that make the man he interviewed come alive. Made us delight in reading about him:

“He describes his essential work to me as a ‘gymnastics of seeing’…”

“ ‘I didn’t put on a tie!’ ‘Am I going to be refused?’ No neckwear-natured altercation takes place,…”

“A small group heads to Jimmy’z, a temple of the Riviera dance scene in the seventies that has changed scarcely at all since the salad days of disco.”

– From Nathan Heller’s interview with Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquiere

Have Broom. Will Bloom!

This has nothing to do with writing or language usage but it gave me a chuckle as I started the day:

“At my Garden Club meeting this week, I asked what to do with a Trumpet Honeysuckle I planted last year that still won’t bloom. “Beat it with a broom,” someone said. A few other gardeners agreed. Seems that if you hit the plant with a broom handle, it wants to defend itself so it releases extra energy that makes it bloom. I looked around online and found the same advice with one other suggestion. Beat it at night so the neighbors won’t see. Have Broom, Will Bloom.” – Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound in her 9/13 newsletter. (great marketing advice weekly e-newsletter. If you want to subscribe visit http://www.publicityhound.com)

Quote of the Week

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it is those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” – Desmond Tutu

Quote of the week

“Life tells us to find the big moments. But life happens in the smaller moments. These are the moments that feel like nothing else.” – from an UGG ad in September Vogue magazine

Quote of the week

“The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.” – Wattace Stevens