The beauty and power of words Part 2: Find the right words

I do not suggest for one minute that content and style have nothing to do with each other. I tend to go straight to the example of JFK’s “We choose to go to the moon,” speech, the contents of which are clearly to rouse support for his plan to put a man on the moon. He could have easily come out in front of the people at Rice University that day in 1962 and said, “Here are all the reasons we should go to the moon,” and then rattle off a list of what can be gained in sending a manned spacecraft to the moon. Instead, there is poetry in his words.

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.”

OK, it’s clearly a dig at Communist Soviet Russia but it’s also rousing. Progress of all the people? Hell yeah! I’m down with this.

Just look at the most famous part of the speech and try to read it as a boring old briefing of our intention to go to the moon. Try to read it without thinking of the pioneering spirit it encapsulates.

“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice (University) play Texas? (Texas always beats Rice at Football. Why do Rice even bother to play against them?)

We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”

I imagine current marketing people saying: “It’s too wordy. It’s not clear enough. We need more content, more detail. Can we tell the people, perhaps in some sort of list, what we can gain from the moon? You speak of new knowledge to be gained. Could we hint at what that knowledge might be? Stay on point Mr President. The key facts we want to get across are:

It's dangerous in space for everyone.

We come in peace but we’re not sure the Russians do.

Isn’t it a great opportunity for countries to work together? Although we fully intend to plant the Stars and Stripes flag there when we arrive.

What’s so great about the moon? Nothing, we just want to do it because it’s difficult and because the Russians want to do it too.

And in going to the moon we might make some advances in technology.”

How can anyone say that how something is said is second to what is said, that all we want to know is “what happens” in any given narrative. The opposing argument for content rather than style is that the speech is only good because he’s talking about going to the moon. If he were talking about going down the road to the chemist it wouldn’t be the same. If I could set homework it would be to re-write that speech but make it about going down the road to the chemist.