What makes a line quoteworthy? A study out of Cornell examines why specific movie phrases end up becoming part of our collective consciousness.
Researchers/film buffs pulled popular movie quotes from IMDb and compared them with other lines spoken by the same character at approximately the same time in the film. The study found that most of the quotable phrases involved pearls of wisdom that were fairly common sense, yet expressed with unusual word combinations.
These lines also contained grammatical features that made them general, and therefore, applicable to more quoteworthy situations.
Grammatical features of a memorable line include:
- Pronouns (other than “you")
- The indefinite article “a" rather than the definite article “the"
- Past-tense verbs
Using these features will up your chances of making a line unforgettable. Remember this — nobody puts (a good quote) in the corner.
Test your memorable movie quote knowledge here.
(via MIT Tech Review)
