Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Power of Negative Writing

A recent article appearing in The Wall Street Journal entitled The Power of the Negative written by presidential historian Douglas L. Wilson (published January 17, 2013) made the point that our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, was able to infuse power into his rhetoric by tapping into negative sentence constructs. As evidence, Mr. Wilson quoted excerpts from some of Lincoln's most memorable speeches:

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.

The legal rights of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives, I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institutions in the states, I have constantly denied.

You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.

And by far Lincoln's two most famous negative sentences both come from the Gettysburg Address:

We cannot dedicate; we cannot consecrate; we cannot hallow this ground.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

By going negative in our writing we can lay claim to far more sweeping, visionary statements specifically because we are denying them. Oddly, the negative approach by taking in a larger vision gives voice to powerful, memorable phrases.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,, the statement by Barry Goldwater when he accepted his party's nomination is an excellent example.

We often see the power of negative writing at work in persuasive communications.

How often have have you seen and heard television commercials that claim something akin to the following:

''No detergent cleans better.''

''No gasoline has been proven to burn cleaner.''

''No network in North America gives you better coverage.''

Although these statements may sound like superiority claims, in fact they are parity claims. What is a parity claim? For example, in the case of the first one, ''No detergent cleans better,'' that claim actually means that the detergent being advertised is no better or worse than another. Likewise for the other two examples: All gasolines burn equally as clean. All networks give just about the same coverage.

Would you buy a toothpaste that claimed to clean teeth just about as well as any other toothpaste? I bet you would not. I'll bet you would want to purchase a toothpaste that claimed, No other toothpaste cleans teeth better. Don't you agree?

I have used this negative approach in headlines I've written:

For example: High Blood Pressure: Ignore it and You Will Go Away.

You could never get the same power by going positive. If you tried it would sound a little lame: High Blood Pressure: Pay Attention to it and you might live. Not as impressive, wouldn't you agree?

So the next time you are at a community meeting and someone announces that ''No one has done more to for this town that so-and-so'' know that the person referred to did about as much as anyone else. The speaker is not claiming that the person did more, only that no one else did more, which really means the person did about as much as anyone else.

It's not claiming superiority. It's claiming only parity. Yet most people will read that sentence and infer superiority from it. Pretty sneaky, huh?

So take care when you choose to go negative. We cannot help but participate in the vast conspiracy of negativity manipulating our opinions. Or can we?

I'll be back next month with more about effective writing.