If your description is in general terms they may grant you
your principle, and then out of mere inertia and a vague feeling against
change vote the other way.
A rough test for concreteness is your vocabulary: if your words are
mostly Anglo-Saxon you will usually be talking about concrete things; if
it is Latinate and polysyllabic it is probably abstract and general.
Most of the things and actions of everyday life, the individual things
like "walls" and "puppies," "summer" and "boys," "buying" and "selling,"
"praying" and "singing," have names belonging to the Anglo-Saxon part of
the language; and though there are many exceptions, like "tables," and
"telephones," and "professors," yet the more your vocabulary consists of
the non-Latinate words, the more likely it is to be concrete, and
therefore to keep your readers' attention and feelings alive. Use the
simple terms of everyday life, therefore, rather than the learned words
which would serve you if you were generalizing from many cases. Stick to
the single case before you and to the interests of the particular people
you are trying to win over. To touch their feelings remember that you
must talk about the things they have feelings about.
The use of similes and metaphors and other figurative language raises a
difficult question.
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