How Do Apple’s Sentences Compare to Hemingway’s?
What Apple events teach us about persuasive language.
Issue No. 21
Last Tuesday, Apple held an event to unveil new iPad Air and Pro models. I’ve long wanted to do a deep-dive into the language that’s used in these public presentations because of how well-crafted and deliberate they are. In this issue, we’ll go over examples of adjectives, adverbs, sentence lengths, and anchors and see how they’re used to persuade us to buy something. (The Hemingway comparison is in section 2.)
(Full disclosure: I worked at Apple from February 2017 to April 2024 solely in engineering and design roles. None of the information in this issue is based on any internal knowledge of what goes into the making of these public presentations. I don’t have the faintest idea what goes into them.)
1 Adjectives and adverbs
An adjective modifies a noun. For instance, “This cup has a mighty design.” An adverb modifies an adjective, a verb, or another adverb. For instance, “This cup is incredibly strong.”1
What both of them do is make us feel a certain way about the cup. Incredible strength brings to mind a certain feel-good image (say, a character from a comic or a movie), which in turn evokes a certain feel-good emotion. Once in that emotional state, we’re more likely to make the leap and buy the cup.
Apple’s event ran for 38 minutes, during which there were 4,900 words. Of those words, 426 were adjectives (133 of them unique), and 121 were adverbs (29 of them unique).
That means an average of 14 adjectives and adverbs a minute. So roughly 14 times a minute, a viewer would be receiving signals aimed at putting them into a feel-good emotional state.
Here’s an example.
[The new iPad Pro] features the breakthrough Ultra Retina XDR display, the next-level performance of M4, fast 5G cellular, and a landscape front-facing camera. All in a jaw-dropping, incredibly thin and light design that’s the thinnest Apple product ever.
That’s four adjectives (jaw-dropping, thin, light, thinnest) and two adverbs (incredibly, ever) packed into a single sentence.
Apple doesn’t rely solely on emotion-evoking words, of course. It also shares facts. Oftentimes, we get the fact first, followed immediately by an emotional stimulus. For instance,
[Fact:] The 11-inch Pro is 5.3 millimeters thin, and the 13-inch Pro is an incredible 5.1 millimeters thin.
To someone, maybe that level of precision doesn’t mean much. Maybe it’s not crucial to them that the device is 5.3 millimeters thin and not 5.4 millimeters. But when it’s followed with,
[Emotion:] Just holding it in your hands is an unbelievable experience.
Oh, yes. That feeling’s universal. The thought of an experience that’s that so good it’s borderline not believable is a pretty good one.
Similarly, a fact like this one might not mean much to someone who doesn’t have domain knowledge,
[Fact:] … with M4, we have our most powerful neural engine ever, capable of an astounding 38 trillion operations per second.
Is that better than 37 trillion operations? Is it worse than 38.5 trillion? They probably wouldn’t know, since they can’t really relate it to something that’s familiar to them. But when the line’s then followed with,
[Emotion:] It can do amazing things even faster, like easily isolate a subject from its background in 4K video with just a tap in Final Cut Pro.
Sweet. All of a sudden, even I want to start making videos where I can do that.
Apple uses some adjectives and adverbs repeatedly. The words new and all-new appeared a whopping 97 times (107 time if we include latest, upcoming, state-of-the-art, and next-generation). That’s 2% of all words spoken at the event. 19 times during the presentation, we hear the phrases: “The new Air”, “New iPad Air”, and “The new iPad”.
Repeating words helps solidify an explicit association in our minds between a word and an emotion. Repeat the word all-new tens of times to me, and I’ll probably walk away with the feeling that the thing you just showed me is so exclusive and so pristine and so unadulterated that I’d feel special if I owned it.
These were the most repeated adjectives during the event:
new or all-new: mentioned 97 times
powerful: mentioned 20 times
more: mentioned 19 times
incredible: mentioned 17 times
light or lighter: mentioned 15 times
amazing: mentioned 14 times
thin, thinner, or thinnest: mentioned 14 times
A little over half the adjectives weren’t repeated. They were only ever used once. These help create implicit associations. An emotive “gallop” of sorts to reference the last issue. They contribute to the feeling some of us might be left with after an event like this where we tell someone how excited we are about something, and they’ll ask us why, and we sort of get tongue-tied. (But dad, I need it because … you know … because, you know, it’s just so cool.)
Some of those singleton words were: dynamic, tremendous, awesome, consistent, seasoned, beloved, game-changing, realistic, next-level, mighty, jaw-dropping.
The most repeated adverbs?
now: mentioned 28 times
just: mentioned 20 times
ever: mentioned 17 times
today: mentioned 13 times
entirely: mentioned 5 times
completely: mentioned 4 times
incredibly: mentioned 3 times
Those first three words, in certain contexts, aimed at imparting a sense of urgency. For instance,
Today, we have some huge updates across the iPad lineup.
You can order the new Air today, and it’ll be available next week.
As with adjectives, a little over half of the adverbs were only ever mentioned once. Some examples: unquestionably, unbelievably, seamlessly, remarkably, outrageously, impossibly, amazingly.
If we group together all these adjectives and adverbs and sort by how many times they showed up, here’s what we get.
I’ll leave you with some excerpts:
This was essential to deliver incredible performance in the exceptionally thin and light design of iPad Pro.
And M4 also features an entirely new display engine designed with pioneering technology that enables the stunning precision …
So we developed a state-of-the-art display that uses two OLED panels.
If you ever lose Apple Pencil Pro, you can easily locate it, since it now supports Find My.
The small but mighty iPad Mini.
… [with] the introduction of the powerful M4 chip.
This is the strongest iPad lineup we've ever had.
We’ve added these architecture and performance improvements while maintaining our industry-leading performance per watt.
With M2 and the current iPad Pro, it already delivers class-leading performance.
The new Pro jumps from M2 all the way to M4 to enable its amazingly thin design and game-changing display while delivering a huge leap in performance.
2 Sentence lengths
When you’re trying to persuade someone to read your book, you have to hook them right from the first paragraph. When you’re trying to persuade someone who’s watching your event to keep watching till the end, you still need a hook, but you also have to maintain their attention. And attention, as far as I can tell, has been dropping significantly in recent years.
One study I read said that the average attention span on a screen has dropped from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds since 2004.2 And videos I’ve seen on YouTube, analyzing attention on that platform, tell a much bleaker story. One said you have all of a few seconds to capture someone’s attention before they swipe away.
So it pays to have shorter sentences that deliver simple ideas. How do you think Apple did? For comparison, Hemingway—the poster child for pithy writing—averaged 10 words per sentence, and in one of his books, his average was even lower. Do you think Apple did better or worse than Hemingway?
Apple’s was actually 15 words per sentence.3 That’s pretty good. It means ideas were communicated in relatively short bursts.
Here’s an example of a 15-word sentence that succinctly gets a point across.
We have a huge day of announcements ahead of us, and it’s all about iPad.
The longest sentence had 35 words, and was a summary.
It’s the combination of the world’s best displays, the extraordinary performance of our latest M Series chips, and advanced connectivity and accessories in an ultra-portable design that puts iPad Pro in a class by itself.
The shortest sentence was had just two words and came at the outset.
Good morning.
3 Comparisons
A signature of Apple presentations that others have copied is how it compares a product to competing products. It’ll pick a category and some point in time, and then deliver a simple metric that shows how this new product is better than that other one. It’s called the anchoring effect.4 You’re anchored to a reference point, and then you’re told why this new thing is better than the reference point, but in simple, memorable terms.
For instance, a product’s performance might be compared to Apple’s historic competitor—the PC.
[W]ith this level of performance, the neural engine in M4 is more powerful than any neural processing unit in any AI PC today.
It might be compared to a previous model.
… the new Air is nearly 50% faster than the previous Air with M1 …
It might be compared to an even older model.
… the new iPad Pro is up to four times faster than the previous iPad Pro with M2, and up to an astounding 10 times faster than the original iPad Pro.
The new iPad Pro is even thinner than the iPod Nano.
A more expensive model might be compared to a less expensive one.
And the 13-inch model has even better sound quality with double the bass.
In all cases, the goal is to convey that the new product is better. It’s a highly effective way of ensuring a simple, memorable message, by picking a basis for the comparison, and showing how this new thing comes out on top.
Another observation from last week’s event is that the event started with the line,
We have a huge day of announcements ahead of us, and it’s all about iPad. In fact, this is the biggest day for iPad since its introduction.
That immediately anchors us to that first event about iPad in 2010. So we’re automatically primed to compare what we see today to what was announced back then. Not only during the event, but afterwards too, since the anchor is mentioned again at the very end.
It truly is the biggest day for iPad since its introduction.
4 Takeaways
A few thoughts to leave you with, that I think can be helpful for all of us in the way we communicate ideas.
Apple presentations are simple. Short sentences that convey singular messages are memorable. Run-on sentences and jargon can confuse people. Buzzwords like “AI” will put off others who might consider it a cynical attempt to ride some popular wave. It’s actually hard to make a presentation that’s simple. Apple sticks to the principle of telling a simple story.
Apple presentations impart good feelings. Facts engage our rational minds. Emotive language engages something visceral in us. We’re willing to make the leap to buy something if it means we can experience a certain feeling we were promised. You can’t put a price on feelings. Well, I suppose you could. But the idea is we might be willing to pay for something we wouldn’t have otherwise paid for in exchange for a feeling.
Apple presentations are conversational. Apple events make ample us of contractions. For instance, “Here’s John” sounds more informal, more off-the-cuff than “Here is John.” It’s how we talk to each other in real life. And when you see that up on stage, you feel a sort of kinship or connection to the people who are talking at you. It feels more natural.
Apple presentations use anchoring. Products are compared to other products using simple metrics within categories where the featured product comes out on top. That’s why the categories are never the same. Sometimes, the category is which product sold more, other times it’s which product is bigger, faster, lighter, heavier, sturdier, whatever it may be. And the basis for comparisons similarly varies. Sometimes it’s a percent (20% better), sometimes it’s a multiple (2X better).
Apple presentations plant seeds in our heads. The presentation ends with a pretty memorable image. We’re left with the line, “This is the iPad we’ve always dreamed of making.” And you can almost imagine in your mind’s eye, or at least I did at the time, the CEO or a VP wrapped in a warm blanket, a full moon shining in the night sky, an owl perched on a branch, its feathers being caressed by the cool night breeze. A smile, suddenly, mid-sleep. “One day,” he says under his breath. “One day.”
It’s effective, to plant a seed like that right at the end.
For there is nothing to lay hold of. I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.
—Virginia Woolf (The Waves)
Until next time,
Ali
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to one day mention us.Adverbs often, though not always, end in the suffix -ly. Notable words that don’t end in that suffix are words like today or now, which modify time by telling you which time a person is referring to (now, not later), or words like just, which can mean exactly (“delivers the same performance using just a quarter of the power”) or simply (“with just a tap”) or merely (“starts at just $599”) for instance.
That’s the mean. The median’s 14 words.
https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans
Could you do this across all keynote events? What has stayed the same? And what has changed?