Page 150 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

WRITE LIKE YOU SPEAK 141

A good analogy can make all the difference. As a client of mine
puts it, a good analogy can light up the room. Here’s another
example:

Rabbits: Increased productivity worldwide is projected to rise
by 2 percent or 99.3 million tons per year in terms of edible
grains.
This dry little sentence is not only badly written (“in terms
of . . .”—passive voice, and “edible grains”—a sheepdog) but also
provokes a big “So what?” When we dress it up, we might get some-
thing like:

Revised: Increased productivity worldwide will mean another
2 percent of rice, corn, and wheat a year—roughly 100 million
tons. That’s enough food to feed every hungry mouth in the
Third World for three months.

The food analogy provides not only dramatic perspective and
dimension but also the all-important human element that makes the
numbers, and the business behind them, seem to come alive.
The insurance industry is notoriously fond of statistics as we can
see in the following examples:

Rabbits: During the past five years, property and casualty pre-
miums have grown at a 15.6 percent average compound annual
growth rate to $90.1 billion. Personal lines have grown to $38.4
billion (a 14 percent annual growth rate), and commercial lines
have grown to $51.7 billion—a 16.7 percent compound annual
growth rate.

Revised: During the past five years, property and casualty pre-
miums have grown to more than $90 billion. That’s enough
insurance to insure every house and car in England. Put another
way, if your salary had gone up at the same rate and you were
earning $18,000 a year in 1979, today you’d be making $116,000
a year.