- Image via Wikipedia
Metaphors connect ideas through images.
Learning to use metaphors allows you to suggest things to readers that would otherwise be stopped by their logical ‘left-brain’. Right-handed people are left-brain predominant.
In theory, when you use images, such as visual metaphors, you connect to the side of the brain, which interprets abstract concepts.
Metaphors connect at a deeper level than dry facts, helping the reader to remember what they’ve read on multiple levels.
You can use metaphors to re-enforce your message to a reader. After you’ve warming them up with logical arguments, statistics and other such approaches, introduce a memorable metaphor to stamp the message onto their memory.
While it’s easy to forget words, text and stats, you almost never forget an image.
Where do Metaphors come from?
The word Metaphor is Greek and means to ‘transfer something’.
- This is the same meta as in metadata, metatarsal, and metamorphosis.
- A metaphor is a figure of speech, a word or phrase, which suggests a likeness between two objects or ideas that are dissimilar.
- Metaphors suggest a similarity.
- They help recall information.
When you can’t remember numbers, data or facts, by using a metaphor, the image may come to mind that helps recall what you’ve forgotten.
Metaphors are very common in everyday speech, (e.g., “Life is a yo-yo. It’s a series of ups and downs”) and we tend to forget their ability to introduce information in a new way.
Steps to Avoid
- Jaded writing borrows re-hashed metaphors. It dilutes the material and comes across as a cliché. Avoid re-writing your material just to insert a metaphor that you hope will spruce up your article. This will only make your material look stilted and poorly constructed.
- Readers will notice this immediately and move on.
- Create your metaphors early in the writing cycle
- Metaphors are best developed during the initial drafting phases. As part of the document’s evolution, they grow with it as you develop the material.
Once you’ve finished, revise the metaphor and see if they are appropriate. Delete clichés and check for accuracy. Readers will give you a certain amount of poetic license, but if you go too far, they will not be impressed.
Be careful that you don’t add in new metaphors.
If you do this, the metaphors will start competing for attention and confuse the reader. Be selective. After reading a good metaphor, the reader needs time to digest it.
Only use the best metaphors. Delete those that feel bad.
How to test a Metaphor?
- When revising your metaphors, ask yourself, “Have I heard this before?”
- Depending on how it fits with the rest of the copy, decide it’s a cliché or really adds value. Finally, metaphors shouldn’t overshadow the main message.
- If the reader stops to admire them, you’ve missed the point.
- Metaphor should support the content, make it easier to remember, but not overshadow the message.
What do you think?
Do you use – or avoid – metaphors in your business or technical writing?
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