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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. Efficiens dici potest. Sed ad haec, nisi molestum est, habeo quae velim. Primum in nostrane potestate est, quid meminerimus? Quamvis enim depravatae non sint, pravae tamen esse possunt. Omnia contraria, quos etiam insanos esse vultis. Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Sed ille, ut dixi, vitiose. Quam ob rem tandem, inquit, non satisfacit? Primum in nostrane potestate est, quid meminerimus? Sint ista Graecorum; Quod autem satis est, eo quicquid accessit, nimium est; Saepe ab Aristotele, a Theophrasto mirabiliter est laudata per se ipsa rerum scientia; Quam illa ardentis amores excitaret sui! Cur tandem? Hic Speusippus, hic Xenocrates, hic eius auditor Polemo, cuius illa ipsa sessio fuit, quam videmus. Multoque hoc melius nos veriusque quam Stoici.
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Weave the Rule of Three into your communication.
Practi ...
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cupit enim dícere nihil posse ad beatam vitam deesse sapienti. An hoc usque quaque, aliter in vita? Satisne vobis videor pro meo iure in vestris auribus commentatus? Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Hoc loco tenere se Triarius non potuit. Nonne videmus quanta perturbatio rerum omnium consequatur, quanta confusio? De vacuitate doloris eadem sententia erit. Negat enim summo bono afferre incrementum diem. Quae in controversiam veniunt, de iis, si placet, disseramus. Sit enim idem caecus, debilis.
Et quidem iure fortasse, sed tamen non gravissimum est testimonium multitudinis. Qui enim voluptatem ipsam contemnunt, iis licet dicere se acupenserem maenae non anteponere. Dici enim nihil potest verius. Ergo hoc quidem apparet, nos ad agendum esse natos. Quaesita enim virtus est, non quae relinqueret naturam, sed quae tueretur. Quae cum dixisset, finem ille.
Quantam rem agas, ut Circeis qui habitet totum hunc mundum suum municipium esse existimet? Tria genera cupiditatum, naturales et necessariae, naturales et non necessariae, nec naturales nec necessariae. Quamquam tu hanc copiosiorem etiam soles dicere. Plane idem, inquit, et maxima quidem, qua fieri nulla maior potest. Quid ei reliquisti, nisi te, quoquo modo loqueretur, intellegere, quid diceret? Quod quidem nobis non saepe contingit. Sin ea non neglegemus neque tamen ad finem summi boni referemus, non multum ab Erilli levitate aberrabimus. Tum Piso: Quoniam igitur aliquid omnes, quid Lucius noster? Idem fecisset Epicurus, si sententiam hanc, quae nunc Hieronymi est, coniunxisset cum Aristippi vetere sententia.
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.
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