Painting with words
How can preachers use words more effectively?
Kate Bruce offers some ‘top tips’:
1. Use language with multi- sensory appeal.
2. Use verbs to paint vivid pictures (not adjectives).
3. Use imagery – employing metaphor and simile.
4. Weave imagery into the flow of familiar conversational language.
5. Be alert to the power of hyperbole and bathos.
6. Earth abstract ideas in the soil of the everyday – use familiar instances.
7. Understand the musicality of language – rhythm, repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia.
8. Vary line length for punchy effect.
9. Avoid over lengthy sentences.
10. Cull the empty calorie language!
(Wording altered very slightly)