“The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.”

That gem comes from an article titled “Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay” (sic), which in turn was based on an article in the Washington Post. And it’s our easy-going way of getting into the use of metaphors, similes, and analogies.

If you’re like me, you probably have trouble keeping track of the distinctions among these three figures of speech. Regardless, just remember that describing one thing in terms of another can take us a long way toward achieving our communication goals.

Why? Because metaphors, similes, and analogies can help us communicate more effectively. I’ll confess up front that I don’t use them often enough, but I that’s another story.

From a strategic perspective, metaphors, similes, and analogies offer a number of useful communication possibilities. For convenience sake, I’ve loosely grouped them into two categories: effectiveness and efficiency.

They’re effective when they generate insights that otherwise might be missed. Suppose you’re writing a memo and want to warn others about accidentally tripping an exit alarm; you might say, “Be careful because the alarms are extremely loud, like someone revving up a chainsaw just inches from your ear.”

Metaphors, similes, and analogies also might give life to abstract ideas. For example, you might write, “Losing these key contracts would be like having our front teeth knocked out.”

And for effectiveness we also note their value when you want to be ambiguous. For example, one Canadian premier responded to election campaign accusations by saying “Tell them I smiled and smiled and smiled.”

Metaphors, similes, and analogies also help us communicate more efficiently.

They provide a form of shorthand that can immediately convey not only a description of a situation, but also tell us how the speaker or writer feels about the situation. For example, if someone tells you she works in a real Alice in Wonderland department, you’d probably have a good sense of her meaning.

You might also use them to provide context. For example, if I mention “Internet scam,”

the phrase would likely bring a number of images to your mind, and collectively those images would constitute a framework within which you would filter the words that followed.

Finally, here’s one more gem from the Worst Analogies collection (and I hope I haven’t contributed any that would qualify):

“His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.”

(source:
http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/language/analogies.html – apparently no longer available)