1. Choosing Your Words Carefully

2.  Meant to create pictures for audience  Metaphor  Personification  Simile  Allusion – Reference to well-known event, person, place or story (i.e. myths, Bible, etc)  Hyperbole  Imagery  Connotation  Analogy – Comparing something unfamiliar to something well-known  Symbol

3.  Repetition – Use of same words/phrases multiple times  “It was a strange night, a hushed night, a moonless night.”  Alliteration – Repetition of initial sounds of words  “The monster rambled, raged, and roared.”  Onomatopoeia – A word that sounds like its meaning.  “buzz”, “splash”, “crack”

4.  Sentence fragment – incomplete thought  “A cold, lonely room. No place to spend twenty years of a life.”  Periodic sentences – withholds the most important point in a sentence to the end.  “Whether playing a young adventurer, a fugitive from the law, or the U.S. president, there is one actor whose films always make money—Harrison Ford.”

5.  Reversal – repeats words/phrases in reverse order  “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  Climactic word order – presents multiple facts in order to build to the most important fact.  “The player rose from high school, to college, to the minor leagues, and finally to the major leagues.”

6.  Abnormal word order – gives variety to writing by changing the usual subject-verb order  “The broken window in which the thieves entered.”  Parallel structure – repeats specific words  “This is a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

7.  Understatement (Litotes) – creates the reverse effect (and adds a touch of irony) by making the fact seem less significant.  “Are you aware, Mrs. Bueller, that Ferris does not have what we consider to be an exemplary attendance record?”