There were a handful of points that stuck out to me throughout “See Through Words” by Michael Erard. Early on he writes that metaphors are “meant to make someone realize they’ve only been looking at one side of a thing” which was a great introduction into the rest of his paper. This quote gave a basis of finding new perceptions of things. It was simple but enforced people to look at both sides. There will always be a handful of people who think differently than the others, but if one’s metaphor can get the majority of people to think and agree with what they’re saying without much conflict, then you’ve written something well.

This led to a later quote when Erard talked about the idea of “mapping between two concepts” and trying to build the best metaphorical bridge possible. One of the examples discussed earlier was the health department who used the metaphor “the department holds the key for unlocking health” which ties back into the use of the bridge connecting two concepts. Different people will perceive the space between those two concepts differently (as noted) which is unavoidable. If you can map out these concepts after sorting out the best metaphor from the group, you may just find one that works the best.

The last quote I found intriguing was “To design a metaphor, you have to get beyond what people say they like or don’t like.” This meant to be you have to spark emotions. You can just write “The hospital is a home” because not everyone will really key into what you’re saying. You need to be in depth and descriptive and say “The hospital is the cure for life” because it strikes a certain emotion that will get people to hopefully become brave enough to walk in if they were afraid before. When comparing two different topics however like the children and the flowers, it’s important to prevent hierarchy as Erard mentioned. In this case with the hospital, it seems to be alright to use the art of emotion because it only focuses on one subject.