Personification.

Virtue won't hurt you, but vice is nice. Witty eh? Ogden Nash. Clever stuff. But it is just that. Clever stuff.

Please do not forget to put on your handbrake when you park your car. (stifles yawn.)

Remember, telling the truth never hurt anyone. (Yeth Mummy.)

All very boring.

Now personalise it.

Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go to night clubs.

Mother loses baby in river after forgetting to secure the handbrake. (This is a story which is tragic – and true.)

George Washington owned up when he had cut down the cherry tree.

Works every time. A million deaths, said Stalin, is a statistic. One death is a tragedy. An abstract noun is – an abstract noun.

The BBC and ITV love personification. 

What better than a weeping family to talk about failures in the NHS?
Who better to explain homelessness than a pretty little girl with a dirty face living alone out on the street in winter?
Greta Thunberg personified Climate Change. Look where that got her. 

Politics?

Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn (remember him?), Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, all familiar faces.

Chinese? Indians? South Americans? No faces so they do not appear on the screens.

Muslims – ah yes, Osama bin Laden!

Who said the Germans have no sense of humour? This is a very hilarious cartoon from Germany. You will laugh. Personification of the demon Brexit!

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Remember him?

Or these?

An abstract noun is a fluttering butterfly. Personification produces that little pin and displays that fluttering butterfly so that everyone can inspect its beautiful wings in all their shining detail. Even though the fluttering has stopped forever.

A level students only:

Look for personification in your English Literature and point it out to the tired examiner. Use the word! Shakespeare used personification all the time.

O son! The night before thy wedding day
Hath death lain with thy wife. There she lies,
Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
Death is thy son-in-law, Death is my heir;
My daughter he hath wedded: I will die,
And leave him all; life, living, all is Death's.

(Romeo and Juliet). There are others...

Personification is hiding, like a little elf, all over the place if you know where to look for him.