The rule of thirds

When things are divided into threes, they just seem more balanced. And that’s as true of the written word as it is of the visual world.

Below is a transcript of the video.

Which of the following pictures do you find more attractive? 

Which looks more stylish? Which more professional? More considered?

If you’re like most people, you’ll have instinctively been more drawn to the image on the left. And you’ve ever done any photography, you’ll be able to articulate why - it’s better composed. 

That’s because it obeys what’s known in the trade as the rule of thirds.

So what’s photography got to do with writing? Well, it’s an example of how the human brain is hot-wired to view the world in threes. 

When stuff is divided into threes, it just seems more balanced somehow. And that’s as true of the written word as it is of the visual world. Let’s take a look at some examples.

Famous threes like:

Three blind mice

Three wise monkeys

Three musketeers

THE RISING TRICOLON

In rhetoric, there’s a particular type of ‘three’ that has a powerful effect on the ear. It’s called the rising tricolon.

A rising tricolon is a group of three things and each one gets longer towards the end. 

Let’s take a look at some examples.

EXAMPLES

Here we have Caesar’s famous three-part phrase, ‘veni vidi, vici’. Which becomes a rising tricolon when translated into English

‘I came, I saw, I conquered’

Notice how the last word, conquered, is twice the length of came and saw.

And Shakespeare had Julius Caesar address the people in a different rising tricolon:

‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’.

In this one, each successive word is longer than the previous one. Friends is one syllable, Romans is two and countrymen is three.

Caesar wasn’t the only politician to use the rising tricolon to engage and persuade his audience.

Here’s a fabulous example from the UK politician Douglas Alexander who used the rising tricolon in the lead-up to the 2014 Scottish referendum.

‘I am Scottish by birth, by choice and by aspiration’.

Rousing stuff, eh? Can’t you just smell his love of his country?

Those words are enough to bring a tear to anyone who longs to be back in the old country of valour. 

But hang on a minute, let’s take another look at that rising tricolon.

‘I am Scottish by birth, by choice and by aspiration’.

As one commentator pointed out in the FT, what Alexander is saying here is he had no choice to be Scottish because he was born that way.

And yet he is also claiming that he did choose to be Scottish.

Finally, he seems to be claiming that he’s not Scottish at all but he aspires to be so.

In other words, the rising tricolon sounds great to the ear but in this instance it’s being used to disguise contradictory nonsense. 

And that actually gives us another great reason to study rhetoric – as well as using it to persuade.

Because rhetoric can help us spot when faulty logic is being used to pull the wool over our eyes.

Let’s take a look at some less dodgy examples of the rising tricolon.

‘Reading, writing and arithmetic’

‘Du pain, du vin, du boursin’

‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’

‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’

‘Lies, damned lies and statistics’

‘There were three things in the world that he held in the smallest esteem: slugs, poets and caddies with hiccups’

‘any one of us at any time may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm’

This video is a sample lecture from my flagship writing course.

For more writing advice, enrol in my online course, Writing With Confidence, available at the Doris and Bertie Writing School.

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