Rory Sutherland

Kingsley Amis believed this, that he was one of the greatest prose writers in the English language.

Because bear in mind, a lot of that stuff's written in 1880.

You read a lot of stuff that's written in 1880.

I'm

Fuck, what does that mean?

Oh, God, hold on.

I'll have to go back to page 27 to work out who on earth Mr. Homer Angel is.

Or Miss Mary?

Miss something Sutherland, isn't that?

At no point in reading a Sherlock Holmes short story have I ever had to go back a page to work out who somebody is.

In terms of just absolutely brilliant clarity, those are astonishing.

But in terms of persuasion, there are various things.

So you use generally verbs of movement.

You use verbs in preference to adjectives and adjectives in preference to adverbs, I think.

You tend to use Anglo-Saxon words rather than the Romance words for the most part without being silly about it.

you convert a feature into a benefit.

There's also an element where sometimes all you need to do is tell people a fact.

Now, I don't know any evidence about this, and I'd like to know it.

And I ask this question, which is, of the people who are anti-vaxxers during COVID, was there a difference between the people who are basically happy with the idea of a vaccine and the people who weren't, partly driven by whether you knew that vaccination dated back to the 18th century and smallpox?

In other words, it was a 250-year-old medical practice.