Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 15: Hyperbole

Hyperbole is so overused it's taken over our lives. I know: I'm being hyperbolic. Hyperbole, exaggerations we do not mean to be taken literally, is a literary device most teachers at school and managers in the office would tell us to avoid. I say not so fast. 

Hyperboles appear in everyday speech and writing, especially on social media. Some hyperboles we use seem harmless enough: Ana is loaded with money, Billy has tons of projects, Carlee walks faster than a cheetah runs, Danny reviewed the accuracy of the protocol a million times. 

So how might we use hyperbole appropriately at work? Here are some examples I've come across that affected me positively with zero offense factor:

• Evelyn's support during the project saved the team.
• Franco's slide presentation spellbound his audience.
• Gayle will get back to you in a flash.
• Hank is an Einstein when it comes to analytics.

So sure, use hyperbole, but be mindful of your teachers' and managers' admonitions to keep them as real as you can for the intended effect.

Improving Your Style Through Diction, Part 14: Anthropomorphism

While personification renders human qualities to nonhuman things, especially natural forces like wind, fire, and ocean, anthropomorphism attributes human qualities to animals. I use this literary device when I say, as I have, the rabbits conspire to reap the harvest of my vegetable garden; or the male cardinal, knowing how I await the sight of his beauty, sashays along my fence before flying off to entertain my neighbor; or her dog, realizing his complaining is pointless, chooses the more practical path of stretching out on the living room floor.

Those who think anthropomorphism in business writing is foolish haven't considered that companies and brands like Jaguar, Puma, and Red Bull named themselves after animals. Of course, sports teams are notorious for doing the same: Chicago Bulls, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Eagles, and Minnesota Lynx, to name only a few.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 13: Personification

Plant and vehicle lovers tend to use personification when speaking of the object of their affection. I heard a friend say her plants say thank you when they blossom in response to her watering them, and another tell me about how his motorcycle understands all kinds of road conditions. Personification, the attributing of human qualities to nonhuman things, challenges readers as well as listeners to use their imagination. 

We use personification when we say those meatballs and sausages were mean to us, or the sun caresses our flesh, or a hard rain smacks our windshield. We personify computers all the time when we say they know a lot, work fast, and die suddenly.

Sometimes, writers can get carried away with personification, as does Ernest Hemingway in translating Spanish speakers to English in For Whom the Bell Tolls, when the mountain rebels make their machine guns "speak" or Eugene O'Neill, whose Christopher Christopherson in Anna Christie says, "dat ole davil, sea—she knows!" But thoughtful personification adds excitement to our writing and even brings clarity to it.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 12: Simile

Simile is a figure of speech similar to a metaphor, but one we are more likely to use in everyday speech. For example, we often hear a beautiful child is as cute a kitten, or a clumsy person is like a bull in a china shop, or a mighty one is as strong as an ox. 

Instead of using metaphor to show someone or something directly applies to someone or something else, we use simile to show someone or something is like someone or something else. The key word in using simile is like or as:

• The proud janitor moves her mop like a queen brandishing her staff.
• She entered the meeting like a general.
• The singer hits those high notes like an angel. 

As with metaphor, we can use simile in writing at work. In fact, we do when we write, "Our office gets as hectic as rush hour in Times Square," or "Business in the personal protective equipment industry during the pandemic has soared like a meteor."

Using simile paints pictures for our readers like no other literary device, so invent some.

Improving Style Through Diction, Part 11: Metaphor

To describe our world, we often use metaphor, which is a figure of speech directly applied to someone or something to show resemblance, although the association cannot be literal. We use metaphors in multiple ways:

• people with other people (My sister is the queen during our family's multi-city Zoom meetings.)
• people with animals (The boxer became a bull terrier as he slashed through the ring.) 
• people with things (Mother was the glue of our family.)
• things with other things (San Sebastian is the heaven of food.)
• places with other places (The platoon waded through hell in the rat-infested swamp.) 

Metaphors enliven not only fiction writing but our business correspondence. Instead of writing "Our company is at the top of the IT field," we might write "Our company stands atop the Everest of IT."