How to Win Any Argument

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Assemble an Arsenal of Magic Words and Phrases

C H A P T E R

7

Assemble an Arsenal of

Magic Words and Phrases

Because the way to win is to grab, hold, and convince

It’s Power-Upper Time

Because you want to “ caffeinate” your argument

You’ll need a basic black dress that will always get

you out of a what-to-wear jam. Jazz it up with a

glittery necklace, glitzy shoes, and a gold belt, and

you’re off and ready for the party.

—A Fashion Editor’s Advice for Young Women Heading

Off for Their First Year of College

How can you power up a phrase, a sentence, or a paragraph to make it

so seductive and so powerful that it reaches, grabs, holds, and convinces?

How can you power up words to slam-dunk a point?

How can you power up your portable points to make them more

intriguing, memorable, and easily understood?

Call upon words and phrases to zoom your argument

from flabby and ho-hum dull to captivating and compelling.

In this chapter you’ll discover how the pros present things

not as they are, but as they want them to be perceived.

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HOW TO WIN ANY ARGUMENT

It’s easy. Abandon the anemic, the rote, the stilted, and the stuffy. Power-

uppers “jazz up” your basic plain-wrap argument.

Power-Upper #1: Craft analogies.

The companies that succeed will be the ones that

make their ideas real…that employ great metaphors

and analogies to define their businesses and tell

their stories.

—Scott McNealy, Cofounder of Sun Microsystems

Ideas become explosive when you call upon the awesome power of

analogies.

Microsoft monopolized the Internet-browser market by bundling its

browser with its Windows operating system—a market in which it already

had a monopoly. With that allegation, the Department of Justice demanded

that Microsoft bundle two browsers, its own and Netscape’s, or none at all.

Bill Gates’s powerful analogy compared the demand to “requiring Coke to

ship two cans of Pepsi with every six-pack.”

It’s not a beautiful city and the traffic is terrible. The air is thick with

humidity and mosquitoes. But then Houston is a city built on a swamp. A

local marketing firm launched an online campaign seeking ways to promote

Houston without resorting to catchphrases that really didn’t say much. A

sampling of some that were used and then soon abandoned: “Houston Proud.”

“Houston’s Hot.” “Space City. A Space of Infinite Possibilities.”

A local seemed to have said it all with an analogy that captured national

attention: “If Houston were a dog, she’d be a mutt with three legs, one bad

eye, fleas the size of CornNuts, and buckteeth. Despite all that, she’d be the

best dog you’d ever know.”

Many feel that the U.S. military response to the World Trade Center

attack should have been limited to the capture of Osama bin Laden and

his henchmen. A White House official used a stand-up-and-take-notice

analogy to argue why that wasn’t a real alternative to war: “You don’t get

rid of a mosquito problem by swatting mosquitoes. You get rid of it by

draining the swamp.”

“Hot analogies” are used to rouse and stir emotions. Those who favored

the United States going to war in Iraq likened Saddam Hussein to Adolph

Hitler. Those opposed warned that we were getting into “another Vietnam.”