Repetition can be found almost anywhere, but it’s more noticeable in the arts. In design, repetition can make a work of art seem more active or bring unity to that work. Music employs refrains and movements as a way of bringing coherence or emphasis. Writing works along the same lines; repetition can result in a sort of “riff,” unify different components of the work, or emphasize a certain idea or image.
How does repetition work exactly? In a work of art, repeated elements play tricks upon the eyes. It is akin to the spiraling circles that lead nowhere yet seem to be popping off the canvas. It is found in merging the background wallpaper with the foreground table and, in so doing, destroying the typical juncture of foreground and background.
In writing, repetition plays upon the ear. It’s a bit like jazz. Repetition forms the basis for improvisation. It creates a sort of rhythm, an active field, upon which the writer varies that rhythm and the sound of it. Slam poetry, for instance, is invested in repetition, and it can be a repetition of rhythm, rhyme, tone, or of the words themselves. Slam poetry is a spoken art, but the principle of repetition applies to work that may or may not be read aloud. The writer relies on the fact that a reader will insert his or her voice into a piece of writing and endow it with nuances and weight. The writer who recognizes that fact may experiment with repetition to see if he or she can create a new effect or affect the reader in a new way.
The aims behind those efforts may be for creative gains, but they have application in professional or commercial communication. Businesses want customers to react in some way to and to act upon the content they produce. They understand that repeating an idea or a phrase – think ads that show on television or are found in other publications – causes the brain to be more likely to remember it.
Repetition within an actual written piece can do something similar. On a small scale, bullet points and crafting those bullet points so that the phrases mirror each other is one of way of creating unity and of drawing attention to the ideas being presented. It’s also found in repeating a certain word, be it a noun, verb, or other part of speech, or the arrangement of words within a single sentence. Such repetition is rarely used throughout an entire paragraph and certainly not with an entire piece of writing; doing so only makes the repetition heavy-handed or hard to follow, and the idea behind repetition is not to browbeat a reader with a concept but to captivate and motivate through unity, emphasis upon a particular point, or even variation of the repetition.
Image: Keith Williamson (CC BY 2.0)