A really good roundhouse of an analogy can help transform any piece of writing from a pedestrian, sluggish, uninspiring string of words into the winged chariot of inspiration, soaring, swooping and banking at the behest of your razor-sharp mind, and kept within the physical realm by a force no less powerful than the barbed straitjacket that has limited and stifled the human imagination for all eternity – the human imagination itself.
Then again, you can get carried away.
Enormous and elaborate flights of fancy are (alas…) inappropriate in a business context. You should ideally restrict your use of metaphors and similes to those instances where they can be kept short and to the point, and where they can help to explain something that might otherwise seem too complicated to the reader.
The issue really is one of not overdoing it. An elegant and appropriate metaphor is not only pleasing to the reader, it can also make clear what a purely factual account might leave stilted and confused in the reader’s mind.
What’s more, a good analogy can also show that your organisation has flair and imagination – a certain sparkle that sets your business copy apart from the crowd.
Analogy Tips and examples
- Sports are generally good
“Nevertheless, our PR department played the criticism with a straight bat and met with angry consumers to see how they could even up the score. It was a wise move, with the national press gatecrashing the meeting, our representatives could easily have been caught offside.” - Military examples are generally bad:
“Nevertheless, our PR department engaged with angry consumers to see if they could agree terms of surrender. It was a wise move; with the surprise attack by the national press, we could have had heavy casualties.”
As a basic rule: avoid anything even vaguely un-PC. This isn’t because we think the world should be wrapped up in cotton wool. We think that any potential clouding of your point should be avoided.
Read more about creating documents that are clear to read:
Creating documents that are entertaining but still simple and clear to read is one of the most important challenges facing writers. That’s why all of our courses include a module called ‘Writing with clarity’. Click here to find out more.
Writing with clarity is also a hallmark of the way we produce copy at Writing Machine Agency. If you want to chat about how we create content using the Structured Writing Method™, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.