Rhetoric is easier than it used to be

Mark Forsyth wrote The Elements of Eloquence: How to turn the perfect English phrase.

“In the age of the soundbite, it’s a much simpler business,” he writes in The Spectator. “Gone are the logical proofs, and the structure of an argument. What’s left are the rhetorical tricks that can be applied to one sentence, the pull-quote. Kennedy knew this. All you have to do is take the first half of the sentence and say it backwards and you’re the hero of the Free World. That’s chiasmus.”