Legal Writing

Skill Is key to Crafting Memorable Quotes

Here is an exercise that helps writers understand the bones of English, the grammar that can make it eloquent and memorable.

By Mary Barnard Ray

This past summer, while wandering through the monuments in Washington, D.C., I was struck again by the words that we choose to carve in stone or mold in plaques. Without question they depend on good thought and great occasions, the raw materials needed to forge great phrases. Nevertheless, good content alone did not make memorable JFK's Inaugural Address, the Gettysburg Address, or the Declaration of Independence. Crafting skill was essential.

If you had any doubts about this, compare the following famous quotes with the subsequent version, only slightly changed.

"[A]sk not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" versus "Rather than asking what your nation can do for you, ask yourself what you can contribute to your country."

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" versus "Our forefathers began a new nation eighty-seven years ago on this continent, dedicating it on the ideas of liberty and equality for all men."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" versus "We believe it is self-evident that all men are equal and that they have the following unalienable rights: 1) life, 2) liberty, and 3) pursuit of happiness."

The revisions are not incorrect, and some are more grammatical. Nevertheless, the revisions sound like miscast bells that won't ring - all noise and no music. What is the skill that makes the difference?

In large part, the ring is created by the grammatical structure of the sentence. Thus a sentence that replaces each word but maintains the same structure will recreate much of the original sentence's eloquence. For example, see the following sentences, which replace each word in the previous quotes but maintain the quote's grammatical structure, noun for noun, verb for verb, and preposition for preposition.

"Grieve not that his career has ended without acclaim. Grieve that acclaim cannot benefit from his company."

"Many years and many miles hence, our children carry forward across their lives our planted dreams, imprinted on minds and remembered in quoted words that our actions had given meaning."

"I write these ideas to catch meaning, which every word has given breath, which themselves are created by their catching of ever more precision, which within themselves hold communication, thinking, and the essence of humanity."

These sentences have lost their original meanings, and yet still retain the sound of something quotable. Such is the power of sentence structure and grammar in English.

More than an interesting exercise, copying the structure of famous quotes is a useful way to build your craft with the English language. Choose any sentence you admire and write it out by hand, word for word. Then replace each word in the sentence with another word, but do not change any parts of speech. More than any writing exercise I have seen, this exercise helps writers understand the bones of English, the grammar that can make it eloquent and memorable.

I urge you to try this exercise, and I ask you to send me your successes. You may even find yourself crafting a sentence that emphasizes a key fact in a Statement of the Case or drives an argument home, thus edifying your work as well as yourself.

Wisconsin Lawyer