Painting a picture using parallelism I don’t always agree with
his opinions, but I never quibble with how one national
columnist expresses them. George Will is to exacting standards
in language the way Lady Gaga is to unbridled statements of
fashion. Will also appreciates others’ command of English. In
his column today, he quotes Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call:
The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Prohibition’s most famous
leader was Carry Nation. Okrent describes her as “six-feet tall,
with the biceps of a stevedore, the face of a prison warden, and
the persistence of a toothache.” (Italics added.) Ouch! If that
doesn’t flash a snapshot into our minds, nothing will. Okrent’s
description works well for two reasons: specific words and
parallelism. Okrent could have simply said that Nation was tall,
strong, ugly and persistent. By painting a word picture,
however, he lets us reach the same conclusion in a much more
satisfying way. He also uses parallelism to great effect.
Parallelism is the repetition of gramm