Flowers of rhetoric

A diagram of virtues, vices and the branches of rhetoric from a 15th-century of Cicero's works, Ajaccio, Bibliothèque Municipale, 80

Why write the 5-word sentence 'This is an emotional book' when you can also do it like this: 'This is a profoundly moving reading experience'. We may chuckle when we read something like this, but this pomposity is far from …