05/30/2018

Write Meaningfully

Make sure the metaphors you use are effective and relatable

Many mission-driven organizations have to instill complex topics into a small amount of copy, and to do so, many copywriters rely on metaphors. But the problem with metaphors, just as with cookies, is that sometimes they crumble.

To make sure the metaphors you’re using are effective, they need to be as relatable as possible. “Good metaphors are inherently democratizing: they rely on objects and actions that are familiar to everyone,” writes Rose Hendricks, a researcher at the FrameWorks Institute, in a recent article for Nonprofit Quarterly. “This way, people can use their knowledge of the well-known concept to make sense of the less familiar one.”

Hendricks provides examples of metaphors that work and don’t work, including an attempt to convey how important the ocean is to environmental health. The metaphor compared the planet to the internet; but it turns out that a lot of people don’t understand how the internet works, making the metaphor ineffective.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.