Sometimes you’ll find a metaphor in an interview. Other times, it’s up to you to create one yourself.

When you find yourself in that situation, try my four-part Metaphor Generator:

Here’s how it works:

1. Jot down the unfamiliar item.

This is the concept you plan to compare. For one group of agricultural writers, that concept was “genetic mapping.”

2. Note the key attribute.

What is it about the unfamiliar topic that you want audience members to understand? In the case of the agricultural writers, the key attribute was that genetic mapping helps ranchers predict the future.

The more tangible and colloquial your key attribute is, the easier it will be to …

3. List familiar items that share the key attribute.

For “predict the future,” for instance, the list might include:

The more concrete and specific these familiar items are, the better the metaphor. For instance: “Dionne Warwick,” “1-800-PSYCHIC” and “Miss Cleo” will all yield better metaphors than “psychic.”

Keep pushing — the more items you list at this step, the more interesting and sophisticated the resulting metaphor will be. Brainstorming in a group might help: More heads are better than one on this step.

4. Craft a metaphor.

Connect the unfamiliar item to the familiar item by means of the key attribute they both share.

Then craft your metaphor with my Metaphor Template.

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My writing team had one of those tough assignments recently that only a geek like me can fully appreciate.

Our job: to transform technical medical text into a fascinating research report that patients, donors and neurointerventionalists alike can understand and enjoy. In some sections, superstar writer Dawn Grubb literally had to look up and define a term in every sentence.

But definitions and descriptions take you only so far. Sometimes it takes an analogy to fully explain technical topics to readers. So I was delighted to read this passage by Dawn:

Writing complex copy? Add an analogy.

Here’s how:

1. Ask your subject-mattter expert.

Sometimes, all you need to do to get a comparison is to ask. The question to ask to get a metaphor is “What’s it like?”

That’s the approach Roger von Oech, author of A Whack on the Side of the Head, recommends. His workshop participants ask:
“What’s it like?” to create metaphors for the meaning of life. Two of my favorites:

Life is like an unassembled abacus. It’s what you make of it that counts.

Life is like a maze in which you try to avoid the exit.

To help your subject-matter expert provide an analogy that anyone can understand, ask the question:

If you were explaining this concept to a class of third graders, what would you say it was like?

2.  Ask Google a question.

But what do you do when it’s just you and a ream of technical documents with no human expert in sight? That’s when Dawn and I turn to our best friend and research assistant, Google, for help.

Dawn started her search on neurointerventionalists by typing “What is brain mapping?” into the Google search box. The results took her to an almost poetic answer at How Stuff Works, one of my favorite Websites for defining, describing and comparing technical terms.

At How Stuff Works, you can learn enough about complicated processes and procedures — from LASIK surgery to liposuction, from cloning to currency — to be able to describe them in conversational terms. And, if you’re as lucky as Dawn was, you might find a good analogy there, as well.

3. Turn Google into a thesaurus.

Just type “define: term” into Google’s search box. You’ll get all the definitions of your terms that appear on the Web — and you just might get a free, bonus analogy.

For a blog post, I recently Googled “define: cochlear implant.” One result included this analogy:

The cochlear implant is often referred to as a bionic ear.

My lead for the blog post:

Think of a cochlear implant as a bionic ear.

4. Get a quick education online.

Once you’ve chosen your analogy, you need to develop it.

When I was developing a horse-racing analogy for a behavioral finance article in a mutual fund company’s marketing magazine, I needed a lot of help.

I turned to OneLook Reverse Dictionary and looked up horse-racing to brush up on the vocabulary. This tool lets you describe a concept to get a list of words and phrases related to that concept.

Then I looked at Wikipedia’s horse-racing page for a fast education on the topic.

Between these two resources, I found enough anecdotes and analogies, facts and phrases and images and ideas to develop extended analogies for several articles. Here’s one section of the final piece:

Find and develop your analogy.

Don’t have access to a subject-matter expert? That’s no reason not to add an analogy to make your technical topic easier to understand. Instead, use Google and other online tools to identify and develop analogies for your complex concept.

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Quick! Which is more effective?

A simple metaphor?

Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus.

— Dean Koontz in Seize the Night

Or an extended metaphor?

Bobby Holloway says my imagination is a three-hundred-ring circus. Currently I was in ring two hundred and ninety-nine, with elephants dancing and clowns cart wheeling and tigers leaping through rings of fire. The time had come to step back, leave the main tent, go buy some popcorn and a Coke, bliss out, cool down.

— Dean Koontz in Seize the Night

The extended metaphor — one that continues through a series of sentences — is nearly twice as persuasive as a simple metaphor, according to Pradeep Sopory and James Price Dillard’s review of 50 years of research.

So extend your metaphors.

Proper investment advice is like bespoke tailoring.

When I was editing a mutual fund company’s marketing magazine, we decided to compare customized investment advice to bespoke tailoring.

We could sustain that from the headline …

Perfect fit

… through the deck …

One size never really does fit all. Here’s how to tailor your portfolio to your own needs and dreams

… through the subheads …

Measure twice, cut once

Tailored fit

Start with these patterns

… through subtle references throughout the article …

See Ann’s extended metaphor on horseback racing.

How to write an extended metaphor

So how do you write an extended metaphor?

First, you need to understand the mathematics of metaphor. The math behind this literary device is simple:

X = Y.

Meaning passes from the base to the target, from Y to X. In “Romeo and Juliet,” William Shakespeare writes:

Juliet is the sun.

Or:

X [Juliet] is Y [the sun].

Metaphor links X to Y:

X is the target.

Y is the base.

Then extend your metaphor by exploring the base. Here’s how:

1. Choose your base.

“If you want to try an extended metaphor, think carefully about your comparison entity,” writes Nancy Kress in Writer’s Digest.

“Choose something that is specific and concrete, like a diamond. Then jot down three or more similarities between that and your original object or situation. Finally, describe the latter in terms of the former, playing with the actual words until the comparisons are both clear and enlightening.”

The sun, maybe.

2. Explore your base.

Now delve deeper into the base to find more specific elements:

• Light
• East
• Moon
• Etc.

3. Compare your topic to these elements.

Now construct metaphors comparing your topic to the items on your list. Here’s Shakespeare:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief …

Extend metaphors like William Shakespeare

See how Emily Dickinson extends her base, a bird, in “Hope Is a Thing With Feathers”:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —

That perches in the soul —

And sings the tune without the words —

And never stops — at all —

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —

And sore must be the storm —

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm —

You’ll see an extended base in Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …”) And in Animal Farm by George Orwell. In fact, you’ll find this literary device in all of the best writing.

Why not yours?

Caravaggio is like chiaroscuro.

In Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, Andrew Graham-Dixon compares the artist to the chiaroscuro — the lightest lights and darkest darks — of his paintings. Notice how the author explores the base to extend the metaphor:

He was one of the most electrifyingly original artists ever to have lived …

He lived much of his life as a fugitive, and that is how he is preserved in history — a man on the run, heading for the hills, keeping to the shadows.

But he is caught, now and again, by the sweeping beam of a searchlight.

His youth is the least documented period of his existence — the darkest time, in every sense, of this life of light and darkness.

But in its shadows may be found some of the most important clues to the formation of his turbulent personality.

How can you explore your base to extend your metaphor?

____

Sources: James Geary, “Metaphorically Speaking,” TedTalks, July 2009

*Nancy Kress, “O My Luve’s Like A Red, Red Rose,” Writer’s Digest, February 2000

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, 2003

Pradeep Sopory and James P. Dillard, “The Persuasive Effects of Metaphor: A Meta-Analysis,” Human Communication Research, July 2002

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When a Hollywood pitchman wants to sell a new horror film about a rampaging dog, he doesn’t have time to explain the storyline. Instead of “then he did this, then he did that,” he might say:

“Think ‘Jaws’ on paws.”

Similes and metaphors are a great way to help readers understand your message. Make sure you’re moving beyond cliches — heart of stone, white as snow — and mixed metaphors to create comparisons that grab readers’ attention and help them see your ideas in a new light.

That’s just one of three ways to develop metaphors that work:

1. Anchor and twist.

Call it “anchor and twist.” To say more with less, anchor your idea to something your audience understands, then twist it to show how your concept is different from the original.

1. Anchor. “Anchoring is easier than explaining from scratch,” write Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick.

“Wikipedia says an alpaca is ‘a domesticated species of the South American camelid.’ That’s the explanation. Or, you could say an alpaca is like a small llama. Which one is easier to understand?”

In this case, “Jaws” is the anchor.

2. Twist. Highlight the differences as well as the similarities. In this case, “on paws” is the twist.

3. Try it. Here’s a fill-in-the-blanks template for an anchor-and-twist metaphor:

Think of _______ [your topic]

as  ________ [anchor]

for/but/with/on ___________ [twist].

You might even get an extended metaphor from this approach. 

Use this formula for a lead or sound bite in your next piece.

2. Play the metaphor game.

In A Writer’s Coach, Jack Hart shares this story:

“In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway recalls the days when he and Fitzgerald careered through the Spanish countryside in an open car, playing the metaphor game.

“One would point to an object as it came into view. The other would generate a figure of speech involving it. If he succeeded immediately, the other took his turn. If he failed, he took a drink from a jug of wine and tried again.”

Practice makes perfect. How could you play at making metaphors to polish your skills at writing analogy?

3. Practice the Popcorn Project.

In my Master the Art of Storytelling workshops, we practice observational research with the Popcorn Project. 

Get some popcorn. (Go ahead. I’ll wait.) Then ask yourself:

“What’s it like?”

Try it! You’ll find that your writing becomes more rich and interesting when you go beyond listing adjectives — white and yellow, dry, bumpy — and start using your senses to compare.

Here are some of my favorite descriptions by workshop attendees:

The raucous crowd of popcorn has the filmy finish of a satin dress that’s been thrown across the room and landed in a soft lump on the carpet.

It’s the taste of Saturday-night movies, huddled with friends, our chatter filling the night air. It’s like an old friend, reminding me of youth, first kisses and whispers in the night.

This popcorn tastes like it was popped last month and shipped across the country in a slow-moving vehicle that stopped at each rest stop the driver passed.

How an you create vivid metaphors and similes that make your messages for compelling and comprehensible?

___

Sources: Anna Muoio, “Meet Hollywood’s Mr. Pitch,” Fast Company, November 1999

Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick, Random House, 2007

Chip Heath and Dan Heath, “Selling Your Innovation: Anchor and Twist,” Fast Company, July 1, 2008

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Don’t mix metaphors. Fewer are more persuasive. Choose one concept for comparison and stick with it.

Here are some other metaphor do’s and don’ts:

DO sync with the subject.

Match your metaphor to your message’s topic and tone.

I once found a participant in one of my writing workshops comparing her company’s new shopping mall to “the phoenix rising from the ashes.” Not only was that a cliché, it was also the wrong comparison and tone for the topic — not to mention the wrong scale.

“Thunderous dunks and lightning-quick running backs offend the serious reader in two ways: 1) They are clichés; and 2) They are questionable, even as hyperbole,” writes Steve Wilson, sports writer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Unless we can create a fresh image or make a strong case for hyperbole, we should equate forces of nature with acts of humanity.”

The best metaphors are appropriate to the topic, tone, occasion and audience.

Sync with the topic. The more your metaphor draws from the topic, the more elegant the result will be, as this passage from a Time magazine movie review of sensational summer movies illustrates:

Instead of leaving the theater with a rosy glow or warm tears, dyna-moviegoers feel like a James Bond vodka martini. They have been shaken but not stirred.

Sync with the audience. This metaphor from Speechwriter’s Newsletter is in perfect sync with the audience:

I hope your holidays were holidays and that, when they were over, your brain began to hum like an old IBM Selectric.

DON’T overdo it.

A 6-course metaphorical feast can be too rich to digest — and can make your reader feel a bit nauseated after. Break it up with some plain-vanilla explanation.

“Cram three similes into a single paragraph and you become a parody,” writes Jack Hart in A Writer’s Coach. “Write page after page of featureless prose and you become a drudge. So work your way through a rough draft eliminating and adding color. A figure of speech every third of fourth paragraph is usually about right.”

Try Hart’s recommendation:

Limit your metaphors to one every three or four paragraphs or so.

Communicate, don’t decorate. The key: Make sure your metaphors don’t distract from your message. So ask, “Is this metaphor architecture? Or interior design?”

Don’t write a groaner.

Metaphors can be great. They can grab attention, clarify complex concepts and entertain your readers.

But sometimes writers, working toward a metaphor, reach too far and wind up writing a groaner instead. Take these, from an article in the latest issue of Women’s Health magazine:

Not that you should squirm like a toddler-tortured caterpillar during a workout.

Your power levels are at their highest, so make the most of them by going hard and sweating like a wool-wearing Floridian.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sweating like a wool-wearing Floridian just reading this.

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Why metaphor?

Metaphor is a literary device that helps readers understand, pay attention, remember and act on messages. Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable: Lips are volcanoes, for instance.

What is the purpose of a metaphor? Use metaphor, says James Geary, author of The Secret Life of Metaphor, because:

1. Metaphor is around us daily.

“Metaphor lives a secret life all around us,” he says. “We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate, learn, discover and invent. But metaphor is a way of thought before it is a way with words.”

2. Metaphor makes messages vivid.

William Shakespeare used metaphor. So did Elvis Presley.

“Now, ‘All Shook Up’ is a great love song,” Geary says. “It’s also a great example of how whenever we deal with anything abstract — ideas, emotions, feelings, concepts, thoughts — we inevitably resort to metaphor.

“In ‘All Shook Up,’ a touch is not a touch, but a chill. Lips are not lips, but volcanoes. She is not she, but a buttercup. And love is not love, but being all shook up.”

3. Metaphor creates expectations.

“Pay careful attention the next time you read the financial news,” Geary says. “Agent metaphors describe price movements as the deliberate action of a living thing, as in, ‘The NASDAQ climbed higher.’ Object metaphors describe price movements as non-living things, as in, ‘The Dow fell like a brick.’

“Researchers asked a group of people to read a clutch of market commentaries, and then predict the next day’s price trend. Those exposed to agent metaphors had higher expectations that price trends would continue. And they had those expectations because agent metaphors imply the deliberate action of a living thing pursuing a goal.”

Would agent or object metaphors best help you set the right expectations?

4. Metaphor influences decisions.

“A group of students was told that a small democratic country had been invaded and had asked the U.S. for help,” Geary says. “And they had to make a decision. What should they do? Intervene, appeal to the U.N., or do nothing?

“They were each then given one of three descriptions of this hypothetical crisis. Each of which was designed to trigger a different historical analogy: World War II, Vietnam, and the third was historically neutral.

“Those exposed to the World War II scenario made more interventionist recommendations than the others. Just as we cannot ignore the literal meaning of words, we cannot ignore the analogies that are triggered by metaphor.”

5. Metaphor opens the door to discovery.

“Einstein described his scientific method as ‘combinatory play,’” Geary says. “He famously used thought experiments, which are essentially elaborate analogies, to come up with some of his greatest discoveries. By bringing together what we know and what we don’t know through analogy, metaphorical thinking strikes the spark that ignites discovery.”

6. Metaphor shakes things up.

“Metaphor shakes things up, giving us everything from Shakespeare to scientific discovery in the process,” Geary says. “The mind is a plastic snow dome, the most beautiful, most interesting, and most itself, when, as Elvis put it, it’s all shook up. And metaphor keeps the mind shaking, rattling and rolling, long after Elvis has left the building.”

___

Source: James Geary, “Metaphorically Speaking,” TedTalks, July 2009

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If crime were a virus infecting our city, would we treat it differently than if it were a wild beast preying on our city?

Yes, we would, found two professors in the department of psychology at Stanford University. That’s the power of metaphor.

Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. “Crime is a wild beast,” for instance. This figurative language allows communicators to anchor ideas quickly — and change people’s minds and behavior.

Is crime a virus — or a wild beast?

In one experiment, professors Paul H. Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky gave participants a report about increasing crime rates in the city of Addison and asked them to propose a solution.

Half the group received this introduction, followed by crime statistics:

The other half received this introduction, followed by the same statistics:

When the metaphor stated that crime was a wild beast, 74% of participants proposed catching and jailing criminals and enacting harsher enforcement laws.

“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.”

— Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher and statesman

When it was framed as a virus, 56% of participants proposed tougher enforcement. These folks were more likely to propose investigating the root causes and treating the problem with social reform to inoculate the community, by eradicating poverty and improving education.

That’s the power of metaphor.

You don’t need to extend your metaphor …

In a second experiment, Thibodeau and Boroditsky made one change. Instead of developing an extended metaphor with vivid verbs like preying, lurking, infecting and plaguing, the researchers used a single, simple metaphor:

Crime is a beast ravaging the city of Addison.

Crime is a virus ravaging the city of Addison.

The results replicated the findings in the first study: Participants were more likely to suggest enforcement (62%) than reform (38%). But participants who’d read that crime was a beast were more likely to suggest enforcement (71%) than those who’d read that crime was a virus (54%).

The single metaphorical noun was enough.

That’s the power of metaphor.

… But you do need to set it up at the beginning.

In a third study, Thibodeau and Boroditsky played with where in the message they introduced the metaphor. Instead of leading with the analogy, they concluded with it.

And instead of asking participants to propose solutions, the researchers asked them to research solutions.

This time, the metaphor made no difference. Participants who read the crime-as-a-beast metaphor were nearly as likely to gather additional information about the city’s social situation (69%) as those who read the crime-as-a-virus metaphor (64%).

Location matters: Set up your metaphor at the beginning of your message, not just at the end. (And please, avoid dead metaphors, aka clichés.)

Readers don’t register metaphor’s influence.

In all of the experiments, participants didn’t recognize the power of metaphor.

• In the first experiment, just 7% identified the metaphor as influential.
• In the second experiment, participants identified the crime statistics, which were the same for both groups, and not the metaphor, as the most influential aspect of the report.
• In the third experiment, just 10% of participants reported that the metaphor influenced their decision.

How metaphors work in the real world

Metaphor changes minds — and public policy — outside the lab as well as in, Thibodeau and Boroditsky point out.

When Ronald Reagan declared a war on drugs in the 1980s, policies mandated longer, harsher sentences for drug-related crime. Since then, the incarceration rate has more than quadrupled in the United States.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.”

 — Daniel Pink, author, A Whole New Mind

A crime-prevention program run by an epidemiologist in Chicago treats crime according to the same regimen used for diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis, focusing on preventing spread from person to person.

When police officers saw their jobs as hunting down and catching a serial rapist, they decided to keep some information from the community so they could set traps for the suspect, according to an analysis by G. Kelling. The rapist attacked 11 girls over 15 months before being captured. If police had shared the information, focusing instead on inoculating the community against further harm, Kelly said, they might have prevented some of the attacks.

The girls, Kelling writes, “were victims… not only of a rapist, but of a metaphor.”

That, too, alas, is the power of metaphor.

____

Sources: Paul H. Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky, “Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning,” PLOS One, Feb. 23, 2011

G. Kelling, “Crime and metaphor: Toward a new concept of policing,” City Journal, Vol. 1, 1991

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When my grandfather first saw a car, he didn’t think “automobile.” He thought, “That’s a carriage that moves without a horse — it’s a horseless carriage.”

He added to his knowledge by comparing the new concept to something he already understood. In other words, he learned through metaphor.

“Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish — a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language,” write George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By.

“On the contrary … metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

Metaphor, in other words, is how we think.

Your brain on metaphor

Metaphors work because they compare the concept to something more familiar: cars to horse-drawn carriages, for instance. That helps people understand new, complex or conceptual information — computers, the internet, love — by means of something they already understand.

That makes metaphors shortcuts to understanding.

We use metaphor all the time:

• We use 50 metaphors per thousand words when we speak, estimates L. Cameron in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (1980).
• TV presenters use even more: one in every 25 words, according to Brian F. Bowdle, in The Career of Metaphor (2005).
• Over a 60-year life span, hypothesizes S. Glucksberg (“Metaphors in conversation,” 1989), one person uses millions of metaphors and other figures of speech.

As Lakoff and Johnson point out, we compare:

• Arguments to war (Attack your position. Claims are indefensible. Criticisms were right on target. Shoot down arguments.)
• Time to money (spending time, wasting time, saving time, investing time, costing time)
• Computers to offices (desktops, files, folders, documents, notepads)

In our brains, love is a journey, problems are puzzles and the internet is a city.

Compare complex concepts

If metaphor, simile and analogy is how we think, then writers can help people think through metaphor.

“The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius.”

— Aristotle, in the Poetics

That’s the approach Richard Preston used in this extended metaphor in The Demon in the Freezer. The metaphor helps people wrap their brains around the science of smallpox:

Steve Martin used the same approach to bring home a conceptual idea — an art movement — in his novel An Object of Beauty:

“Human thought processes are largely metaphorical,” write Lakoff and Johnson. “The human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. … Metaphor is as much a part of our functioning as our sense of touch, and as precious.”

Why is a metaphor effective?

Theorists from Aristotle to contemporary academic researchers agree: There is power in metaphor. Metaphor makes messages more:

• Understandable. Our conceptual system is metaphorical, say researchers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. That means we can help people think — we can clarify complex concepts — through analogy.
• Persuasive. Study after study shows that metaphoric language is more persuasive than literal language.
• Believable. Ads with metaphors were 21% more credible than ads without them, according to a study by Mark F. Toncar and James M. Munch.
• Important. Participants in the Toncar study saw ads with metaphors as 26% more important than ads with literal claims.
• Memorable. Ads with metaphors were remembered almost twice as well as ads with literal descriptions in a study by Edward F. McQuarrie and David G. Mick.
• Readable. An archival study of 854 ads showed that Starch Read Most scores — the percentage of people who read most of the ad — were higher for ads with a metaphor in the headline than with a literal headline. Audience members also may spend more time processing metaphors than just plain facts.
• Likeable. Speakers and other communicators who use metaphors are deemed more appealing than those who do not. They’re seen to be more competent and dynamic and to have better character. And readers like metaphors because it feels good to figure them out.

Tip: Use this list next time one of your approvers wants to strip the metaphors out of your copy.

Bottom line: If you’re communicating technical, scientific or complicated information, use metaphor.

____

Sources: Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Random House, 2007

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980

Edward F. McQuarrie and David G. Mick, “Visual and Verbal Rhetorical Figures under Directed Processing versus Incidental Exposure to Advertising,” Journal of Consumer Research, March 2003

Edward F. McQuarrie, ” The development, change, and transformation of rhetorical style in magazine advertisements 1954-1999,” Journal of Advertising, Dec. 22, 2002

David L. Mothersbaugh, Bruce A. Huhmann, George R. Franke, “Combinatory and Separative Effects of Rhetorical Figures on Consumers’ Efforts and Focus in Ad Processing,” Journal of Consumer Research, March 2002

Richard Preston, The Demon in the Freezer, Random House, October 2002

Pradeep Sopory and James P. Dillard, “The Persuasive Effects of Metaphor: A Meta-Analysis,” Human Communication Research, July 2002

Mark F. Toncar and James M. Munch, “The Influence of Simple and Complex Tropes on Believability, Importance and Memory,” Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Dec. 31, 2003

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People in one study rated a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000 as more dangerous than one that kills 24.14% of the population (Yamagishi, 1997). But in fact, it’s about half as dangerous.

Why? The way you present, or frame, the information changes the way people — even experts — perceive it.

“If you tell someone that something will happen to one out of 10 people, they think, ‘Well, who’s the one?’” Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychologist, told Money.

Trying to help readers make a complex decision? Reframe the data so people can more easily see its meaning. Here’s how:

1. Choose frequencies, not probabilities.

People process frequencies (2 out of 100) better than percentages (2%) (Kaplan, 1986). Frequencies are effective because they:

• Demonstrate the importance of data. People weigh frequencies as more important than percentages when making decisions (Lipkus, Samsa and Rimer, 2001).
• Help people make better choices. In one study, faculty members and students at the Harvard Medical School made much better decisions when they received information about diseases and symptoms in the form of frequencies instead of probabilities (Huffrage, Lindsey, Hertwig and Gigerenzer, 2000).
• Help even experts see the situation more clearly. Forensic psychiatrists and psychologists judged a patient’s risk of being violent as much greater when it was communicated as a frequency instead of a probability (Slivic, Monahan and MacGregor, 2000).

2. Frame as a loss (or gain).

Give readers new ways to think about information by highlighting the potential gain or loss. You can frame your data as:

• Mortality vs. survival rates. The effect of dying seems to be greater when it is framed as a mortality rate of 10% than when it is framed as a survival rate of 90%. And both patients and doctors found surgery less attractive than radiation therapy when risk information was presented in terms of mortality rather than survival, despite surgery having better long-term prospects (McNeil, Pauker and Sox, 1986).
• Risk vs. reward. Consumers understood information much better, valued it more and gave it more weight in decision-making when it was framed as a loss or risk than as a reward. So “protect yourself from problems in health plans” is more effective than “get the best quality” (Hibbard, Harris-Kojetin, Mullen, Lubalin and Garfinkel, 2000).
• Loss vs. gain. In six out of seven studies, framing information as a loss was more effective than as a gain in communicating prevention, detection and treatment (Edwards, Elwyn, Covey, Matthews and Pill, 2001).
• Consider the message within the frame. Framing your message as a loss is more effective when promoting screening. Framing it as a gain is more effective when promoting prevention (Rothman, Martino, Bedell, Detweiler and Salovey, 1999).

3. Generalize a little.

In order to be as “correct” as possible, communicators often include too much information — six decimal points of precision, for instance, or data about confidence intervals.

But that actually makes important details harder to suss out. As a result, people weigh this information lower when making a decision (Hsee, 1996). So, for instance, offer an average point estimate (a score of 8) instead of a more correct one (7 to 9).

But don’t pile on the data.

To help people make better decisions, reframe the data — don’t just offer more data.
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Source: Judith H. Hibbard and Ellen Peters, “Supporting Informed Consumer Health Care Decisions: Data Presentation Approaches that Facilitate the Use of Information in Choice,” Annual Review of Public Health, 2003, Vol. 24, pp. 413-33

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Make mine to go.

More than half of your audience members now receive your emails, visit your web pages and engage with your social media channels via their mobile devices, not their laptops.

That makes it time for a mobile makeover. Here’s how Walter Doerschuk of Grabowski & Co. rewrote his message for the small screen at my most recent Write for Mobile Master Class:

Headline and deck

Focus on the front. In the original, the keyword — depression — doesn’t show up until 16 words in:

That makes it hard for Google (and humans!) to figure out what this story’s about.

In his after, Walter puts the keyword right where it belongs: at the front of the headline:

Intro

You can see the difference at a glance. The original spends 63 words establishing the background on depression before getting to the point: Here are some strategies for coping.

We all sometimes face day-to-day struggles. But sometimes, they turn serious.

Do any of these sound familiar to you?

• Loss of concentration or energy.
• Lack of motivation.
• Little or no sleep.
• Feeling worthless.

If so, you are not alone.

These are all symptoms of depression. It’s a global problem, affecting one out of every 10 people and costing employers $210.5 billion each year.

It’s your time to start 2018 off on the right foot.

In his rewrite, Walter draws readers in by focusing on their favorite subjects — themselves. Note that the list of symptoms is much more interesting when they’re my symptoms instead of just symptoms:

Then a couple of sentences of background information. I like the one in 10 stat more than the “costs employers billions” message. I’d use the latter when communicating to employers instead of individuals.

If so, you are not alone. Millions like you around the world face the same struggles. Depression affects one out of every 10 people, and it’s costing employers $44 billion each year.

And look how much higher the point of the piece — the coping strategies — are:

Body

The bold-faced lead-ins work well in Walter’s original body:

Look at that subhead! It grabs attention, lets people know where to look for the strategies, and even changes the way people look at your web page.

Also, check out that link. Links, being blue and underlined, are among the most visual words on a page. For scanners, it’s the difference between learning Find these new strategies to tackle depression and learning here. (However, I’d find a way to avoid repeating so closely the message in the subhead.)

Ask yourself: Which of those links are you more likely to click on? Find these new strategies to tackle depression? Or here?

I like numbering the tips, but I would put that number in the subheads, too.

Notice that the second list is 31 words shorter than the first.

Next steps

Skim the original section. You get “do” out of it:

For more resources, check here: University of Michigan Depression Tool Kit.

Skim the second. You get “How to get help: Talk, Consult, Call”:

How to get help
If you still struggle, there are more ways to find assistance.

• Talk with your co-workers, family and friends for advice or even just a listening ear.
• Consult with your company’s employee assistance program for additional resources.
• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) with an immediate crisis.

I’d bold-face a bit more:

• Talk with your co-workers, family and friends …
• Consult with your company’s employee assistance program … Call the National Suicide Prevention Line …

Notice that the second list is parallel and imperative, just like Aunt Ann (and other readers) want it to be.

I like the way Walter wrapped the resource into the body of the second piece.

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