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Was De La Soul right, is three really the magic number? Dive into this model and decide for yourself.
< ... Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quid nunc honeste dicit? Non enim quaero quid verum, sed quid cuique dicendum sit. Et nunc quidem quod eam tuetur, ut de vite potissimum loquar, est id extrinsecus; Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Verba tu fingas et ea dicas, quae non sentias? Vitiosum est enim in dividendo partem in genere numerare. Quorum sine causa fieri nihil putandum est. Cupiditates non Epicuri divisione finiebat, sed sua satietate. Etenim semper illud extra est, quod arte comprehenditur. Quid est, quod ab ea absolvi et perfici debeat? Traditur, inquit, ab Epicuro ratio neglegendi doloris. Philosophi autem in suis lectulis plerumque moriuntur. Cyrenaici quidem non recusant; Nondum autem explanatum satis, erat, quid maxime natura vellet. Scaevolam M. Portenta haec esse dicit, neque ea ratione ullo modo posse vivi; At multis se probavit.
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Weave the Rule of Three into your communication.
Practi ...
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cuius ad naturam apta ratio vera illa et summa lex a philosophis dicitur. Cur deinde Metrodori liberos commendas? Ergo illi intellegunt quid Epicurus dicat, ego non intellego? Quod quidem nobis non saepe contingit. Ea, quae dialectici nunc tradunt et docent, nonne ab illis instituta sunt aut inventa sunt? Duo Reges: constructio interrete. At iam decimum annum in spelunca iacet.
Itaque hic ipse iam pridem est reiectus; Sed fortuna fortis; Illi enim inter se dissentiunt.
In quibus doctissimi illi veteres inesse quiddam caeleste et divinum putaverunt. Sed et illum, quem nominavi, et ceteros sophistas, ut e Platone intellegi potest, lusos videmus a Socrate. Cum ageremus, inquit, vitae beatum et eundem supremum diem, scribebamus haec. Nam his libris eum malo quam reliquo ornatu villae delectari. Sed fac ista esse non inportuna; An est aliquid per se ipsum flagitiosum, etiamsi nulla comitetur infamia?
Overuse of any communication technique can become jarring, and the Rule of Three should simply be seen as one of the arrows in your toolkit. To that end, mixing your approach and changing the rhythm of your sentence structure is important.
In addition to rhythm, sometimes using two examples or points can be useful to provide a binary or contrasting view rather than pointing to a pattern.
Martin Luther King Jr— I have a dream.
The Rule of Three is a feature of many of King’s speeches. This site breaks down his most famous speech, and captures this key example:
“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Note that even the list of six items — black men and white men etc. — has been grouped in three groups of two, to maintain the rhythm of the Rule of Three.
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Evidence of the Rule of Three can be traced back as far as Aristotle and biblical writing. Aristotle, inherently captured it in his Rules of Rhetoric, though it is unclear who formally named and identified the ‘rule’, thus we’ve left the model uncredited.
My Notes
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