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when the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length.
For instance, "King Alfred tried to make the law clear, precise, and equitable." The previous sentence has parallel structure in use of adjectives. However, the following sentence does not use parallelism: "King Alfred tried to make clear laws that had precision and were equitable." |
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contrary ideas expressed in a balanced sentence. It can be a contrast of opposites:
"Evil men fear authority; good men cherish it." Or it can be a contrast of degree: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind." |
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repetition in reverse order:
"One should eat to live, not live to eat." Or,
"You like it; it likes you." The witches in that Scottish play chant,
"Fair is foul and foul is fair." Antimetabole often overlaps with chiasmus, below. |
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| A literary scheme involving a specific inversion of word order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a "crisscross" pattern.
For example: "By day the frolic, and the dance by night." If we draw the words as a chart, the words form an "x" (hence the word's Greek etymology):[image] |
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| You can eat well or you can sleep well." While such a structure often results in the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy or the either/or fallacy, it can create a cleverly balanced and artistic sentence. |
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| omitting a word implied by the previous clause: "The European soldiers killed six of the remaining villagers, the American soldiers, eight." |
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| using no conjunctions to create an effect of speed or simplicity: Veni. Vidi. Vici. "I came. I saw. I conquered." (As opposed to "I came, and then I saw, and then I conquered.") Been there. Done that. Bought the t-shirt. |
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| using many conjunctions to achieve an overwhelming effect: "This term, I am taking biology and English and history and math and music and physics and sociology." All those ands make the student sound like she is completely overwhelmed! |
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| (also called Auxesis and "Crescendo") -- arrangement in order of increasing importance: "Let a man acknowledge his obligations to himself, his family, his country, and his God." |
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(anticlimax) Bathos is usually used humorously. Here, the least important item appears anticlimactically in a place where the reader expects something grand or dramatic. For instance,
"I am making a stand in this workplace for human decency, professional integrity, and free doughnuts at lunch-break." |
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| repetition of a consonant in multiple words: buckets of big blue berries. |
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| repetition of vowel sounds: refresh your zest for living. |
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repetition of beginning clauses.
For instance, Churchill declared, "We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost shall be." |
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Anaphora (Epiphora, Antistrophe)
Repetition of a word or phrase in an initial position
Epistrophe
The opposite form, where repetition appears in a final position
Ploce
All cases of insistent repetition that fall into no set patterns
Symploce
Combination of anaphora and epistrophe--double repetition at both beginning and end
Epanalepsis
Repetition of the same word or phrase at both beginning and end of a single line or phrase
Anadiplosis
Repetition of the last word of one phrase at the beginning of the next |
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| Figures of Amplification or Omission |
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| Epithet, Parenthesis, Catalogue, Polysyndeton , asyndenton, Ellipsis |
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| Poetical amplification, an adjective especially vivid or just |
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