Concrete information gets your audience involved, and helps them understand and remember your story.
Abstractions are not very effective for triggering the imagination. They are also more difficult to understand and remember than concrete details.
Concrete language refers to particular things that can be experienced directly. Things that we are familiar with, and things we can see, feel, hear, smell or taste.
With concrete details, your audience can create a vivid mental picture. They get the audience involved, and help them understand and remember your story.
1. Describe the topic in sensory detail
Tickle the senses: describe what your topic looks, feels, sounds, smells or tastes like.
Examples:X “An arachnid with necrotic venom.”
V “A hairy, yellow-brown spider with a flesh-eating poison.”
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X “The medial temporal lobe is a region within the cerebral cortex.”
V “If you would put a finger above your ear and push it into your head about two inches, you’d be in the area called the medial temporal lobe.”
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X “Ocean acidification will negatively impact calcifying organisms.”
V “As oceans become more acidic, sea snails grow thinner shells. Coral reefs may erode faster, as coral skeletons become weaker and more brittle.”
2. Make general concepts more specific
Abstractions are usually very broad concepts – and therefore, not very precise. Specify what you mean!
Examples:X “A state-of-the-art imaging system”
V “A medical MRI scanner that is outfitted with the most recent A.I. imaging technology.”
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X “The system’s power supply.”
V “The electric car’s Li-NMC battery.”
Examples:X “A model”
V “A 3D human embryo model in a petri dish.”
V “A weather forecast model.”
V “A model of a house made out of canvas.”
3. Explain unfamiliar concepts in familiar terms
Introduce abstract concepts that are difficult to picture by:
- giving recognizable examples
Examples:X “Stigmatization is a common societal phenomenon, where people assign negative perceptions to individuals because of their perceived difference from other members of the population.”
V “People tend to bully, stereotype or disadvantage people whom they consider “different” in terms of class, culture or ethnicity.”
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X “She is a famous and influential woman.”
V “She was on the cover of Time Magazine twice. She frequently dines with the presidential family at the White House. Bill Gates calls her for advice.”
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X “The search function for this database takes into account the non-standardized nature of the data.”
V “If you search this database for ”The Netherlands”, the search results will also include hits for ‘Holland’.”
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X “Direct air capture.”
V “Filtering CO2 from the air”
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X “Mobility solutions for corporate car sharing.”
V “An app for carpooling with colleagues.” - or via analogies with things your audience knows.
Examples:X “Facebook has a very large user base of over 2.2 billion people.”
V “If Facebook was a country, it would have the largest population on earth. More than 2.2 billion people, about a third of humanity, log in at least once a month.”
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X “Leukocytes are crucial in immune defense.”
V “Leukocytes are like policemen that catch criminals; the criminals are viruses and bacteria that make you ill.”