Normally when we speak about three or more things in a list, group or series, we separate each of them with a comma, and then use the conjunction 'and' immediately before the last thing in the list, e.g. a,b,c,d and e. However, there are two rhetorical techniques that deliberately break this grammatical 'rule' to achieve a particular effect.
And-itis
And-itis (my term for it; the posh name is Polysyndeton, from the Greek meaning 'many things that bind') deliberately and repetitively uses 'and' (or another conjunction such as or / but / for / not / nor) between each of the words in the list, e.g. 'a and b and c and d and e.' Examples:
"And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had" - Josh 7:24
"When men drink, they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine" - Aristophanes
"Not snow, nor rain, nor heat nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed" - Herodotus
" . . . a new world of law - where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved . . ." President JF Kennedy
The main purposes of and-itis are to slow down the pace of the sentence so the listener can take in the information and by doing so, emphasize the words in the list or series. Compare: “New product X is flexible, fast, adaptable and inexpensive,” with “New product X is flexible and fast and adaptable and inexpensive.” If said in measured tones, the latter puts far more emphasis and concentration on each of the new product's winning characteristics.
It can also be used to emphasize the length of a list, as if the speaker is mentally quoting from one:
"'Tender as my years may be,' said Caspian, 'I believe I understand the slave trade from within quite as well as your Sufficiency. And I do not see that it brings into the islands meat or bread or beer or wine or timber or cabbages or books or instruments of music or horses or armour or anything else worth having'." - CS Lewis ('The Voyage of the Dawn Treader')
“It’s got awesome security. And the right apps. It’s got everything from Cocoa and the graphics and it’s got core animation built in and it’s got the audio and the video that OSX is famous for. It’s got all the stuff we want” - Steve Jobs (Macworld 2007 Keynote Address)
And-itis can also imply a combination without explicitly stating it. Compare 'Alan, Sandra, Jo and Mike' with 'Alan and Sandra and Jo and Mike'. The former indicates four individuals, brought together for some reason. The latter indicates a cohesive group. Used like this, and-itis can be used to indicate a collective without actually naming it.
However, because it is used so much in the Bible, it can come across (especially when used with verbs or actions) as sounding biblical, and almost slightly hypnotic. Take the following examples:
"And the German will not be able to help themselves from imagining the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the Germans will be sickened by us. And the Germans will talk about us. And the Germans will fear us. And when the Germans close their eyes at night, and their subconscious tortures them for the evil they’ve done, it will be thoughts of us that it tortures them with" Brad Pitt as Lieutenant Aldo Raine (from the movie Inglorious Basterds)
"She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants, and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has molded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands" - Walter Pater (writing about the Mona Lisa)
Finally, here are a few examples from President Obama:
"Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions;greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction" . . .
"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history . . ."
"We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories . . .”
“You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington . . ."
"Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year . . . "
So . . . . . how can you use this? Simply look for any point in your initial script which contains a list or series or grouping (did you notice the polysyndeton there?), or somewhere you could introduce one. Let's say you wanted to make the point that everyone in the company was going to have to change the way they did things. You might originally have something like, "Every single department in the company will have to change."
This can be easily adapted to: "It means your department will have to change, regardless of whether you work in production or transport or finance or sales or marketing or anywhere else . . ."
OR . . . . .
"It means your department will have to change. That includes production and transport and finance and sales and marketing and everywhere else . . ."
The repetitive use of the conjunctions 'or' and 'and' give a much better sense of all-inclusiveness and completeness.
And-absence
The opposite of this, i.e. not using any conjunctions at all, I call and-absence (again, my term for it; the posh one is asyndeton, from the Greek no things that bind) e.g. 'a,b,c,d,e'.
"Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint”
"Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom"
“I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors” - Barack Obama
Here, the lack of conjunctions speeds up the sentence without distracting the listener. The deliberate lack can also create an expectation where the listener feels as if the list could just keep going on and on, as in the following quote from the movie 'Forrest Gump':
“Anyway, like I was saying, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil
it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep
fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp,
shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That . . . that's about it" – Bubba, (Forrest Gump)
Like and-itis, it also gives a sense of equality to the things in the list. Take a famous example of asyndeton, Julius Caesar's “I came, I saw, I conquered.” and compare it with “I came, I saw, and I conquered.” The second statement isn’t nearly as strong, merely listing three things and the order in which they happened. The use of 'and' interrupts the flow, slowing down the reader and finalizing the list (i.e. Caesar didn’t do anything else).
When and-absence is used, it clearly implies the ease with which he defeated his enemy. By giving each of the sentences equal weight, it implies that the conquest was no more difficult and took no longer than arriving or seeing.
And-absence also gives a sense of incompleteness — as if more of the same exists beyond the edge of the sentence, and you've stopped before you've arrived at the point where you'd conclude by using 'and.':
"Hog butcher for the world, tool maker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and the nation's freight handler, stormy, husky, brawling, city of the big shoulders" - Carl Sandburg (writing about Chicago)
"Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed"
"With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together knowing that we will be free one day" - Martin Luther King
"All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into darkness" - Winston Churchill
"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardships, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty" - JF Kennedy, Inaugural Address
So . . . . . how can you use and-absence? Use it when you want to quote a few things but imply there is much more that you haven't mentioned. Let's say you want to mention a number of things the company did in the previous year. Your initial draft might contain, "In order to get back into profit we had to close a factory, reorganize transport, reduce spending across the company and suffer redundancies."
The use of the 'and' before redundancies implies that it is a complete list. Saying, "In order to get back into profit we had to close a factory, reorganize transport, reduce spending across the company, suffer redundancies . . . ." and then pausing slightly after the final word, you create a sense of incompleteness, implying that there was also a lot more that happened which you aren't going to go into.
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