There is a word far more favored on the eastern side of the Atlantic called pointe, which comes from French, which ultimately hails from the Latin punctus, whose infinitive form means “to pick” or “to punch.” Aside from being impossible for the American mouth to pronounce, this word carries the general translation of punchline.
Most English-speaking bipeds know through standup comedy what a punchline is: naptime. Of course, no one with a sense of humor watches standup comedy: a population of former third-shift fast-food managers and recent diversity hires creating a considerable racket about genitalia. A more successful look at this idea, then, would be through the writings of a few considerable Wits who are well known for a most sharp sauce.
Just as in the idea of a punchline, one’s image or notion should always be strongest at the end of one’s sentence, paragraph, scene, or chapter. Let us first consider the renowned essayist, fiction-writer, and rhetorician William Taft—excuse me—G.K. Chesterton and how, in his 1908 essay Woman, he makes his point by putting the strongest image at the end of very nice pieces of sentence-length rhetoric, the likes of which I imagine he wrote in a tub:
He knows it would be cheaper if a number of us ate at the same time, so as to use the same table. So it would. It would also be cheaper if a number of us slept at different times, so as to use the same pair of trousers.
The parallelism of these two sentences is undeniably satisfying. Furthermore, the repetition of concrete nouns, table and trousers, respectively, at the end of each sentence, hammers home the loose logic of his statements in such a way that heads nod strongly and headlines read “Chesterton by a mile!”
Sir Kenneth Clark, popularly known for his documentary Civilisation, wrote a book called, well, Civilisation. In the book, Clark admits that he found it a trifle contrived to write a book about the documentary that he made, covering all the same topics in a fashion that seemed now a bit stilted. Nevertheless, Clark’s delightful writing style leaves the reader glad that he did. Here, Clark, amongst a few rhetorical schemes operating in accordance with each other, renders the end of each phrase and sentence with a powerful word about the things that he finds less than desirable:
I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.
The King of Sting, Mark Twain, who was also not entirely unaccustomed to providing readers with his various opinions, is seen here sending over a stiff one on the state of women in 1870s Salt Lake, Utah:
With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here—until I saw the Mormon women.
Why waste perfectly good heartbeats searching for similes with endings powerful enough to leave Isaac smiling and saying “check this out, dad,” as a heavily breathing Abraham comes around the corner with the rope and kitchen knife, when P.G. Wodehouse had walked the Earth for almost a hundred years? Pick any page in Piccadilly Jim and the following can be found:
Mr Pett, on his side, receiving her cold glance squarely between the eyes, felt as if he were being disemboweled by a clumsy amateur.
He had contrived to create about himself such a defensive atmosphere of non-existence that now that he re-entered the conversation it was as if a corpse had popped out of its tomb like a jack-in-the-box.
Ending those similes in “amateur” and “jack-in-the-box” is a work of such fine distinction that one gets the feeling that Wodehouse was ordered from God to carry out the task, saying, “I’m sad and unpredictable today. I need a laugh. What do you got?”
Even the obscure writer, Joshua Smith, in his 2021 comedy novel The Dream Journal of J.D. Solomon, was able to crack a few off successfully. In the opening chapter of the book, the book’s main character, J.D. Solomon, attempts to get out of a tight spot on a public train by pretending to answer a phone call with his wallet:
Therefore, as I had never owned a cellular phone, I disengaged eye-contact with the gentleman and adjusted proximity by way of clever wandering betwixt cabins, feigning a phone call by way of open bifold wallet to ear.
Is it poor form to reference one’s own book in an essay? That is up for debate. But, you see my point.
The theologically inclined amongst us believe the number three to hold divine power, as in the Trinity and the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, whilst the Darwinists remind us that our love of threes has more to do with being clubbed on the head by one’s neighbor and generally made soup of. Regardless of whether you believe in The Witching Hour or confine your study to this Earth of ours, one may enjoy the spoils of this comfortable certainty thrice over through the act of careful composition. And, whether you deal in triangles, trilogies, or tricycles its best to do it in threes.
This is not unlike good writing. There is a concept in writing called Rearrangement. The general gist of rearrangement is to place the emphasis of a sentence where it is to elicit the greatest response from the reader. The least emphatic part of a sentence is the middle, the second most emphatic is the first spot, and most emphatic is stalwart number three. Known for having something of a grasp on rhetoric, Shakespeare committed rearrangement (and tricolon) when he wrote: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
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