Basic Literary Terms
The term for the author's attitude toward a subject.
What is tone?
The term for an extreme exaggeration to make an effect.
What is hyperbole?
The term for the sequence of events in a story.
What is plot?
The term for a reason why the author wrote a text.
What is author's purpose?
DOUBLE: The four most common parts of speech.
What is a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb?
The term for how the author wants you to feel, usually influencing the reader with word choice.
What is mood?
DOUBLE: The term for a comparison between two things using "like" or "as", and the term for a direct comparison between two things without using "like" or "as".
What is simile and metaphor?
The term for the time and place where a story takes place.
What is setting?
The term for a statement an author makes and supports it by providing reasons and evidence.
What is a claim?
The term for the punctuation that creates a pause, is used before conjunctions, and makes a list.
What is a comma?
The term for meaning the opposite of a word or phrase's literal meaning.
What is verbal irony?
The term for words that imitate sounds.
What is onomatopoeia?
The term for the perspective in which a story is told.
What is point of view?
DOUBLE: The four different author's purposes.
What is to inform, to entertain, to persuade, and to express thoughts and emotions?
The name of a clause that contains one subject and one predicate, and can make sense by itself.
What is an independent clause?
The term for a logical conclusion based on context usually to predict future events or imagine what an author means.
What is inference or to infer?
The term for the repetition of initial consonant sounds.
What is alliteration?
DOUBLE: The term for the message or lesson of a story. The term for the ending of a story.
What is theme and resolution?
The term for giving credit to a professional when you use their work.
What is a citation? (citing your source)
The term for words that join two ideas together using a comma and one of the following words: and, but, for, yet, or, so.
What is a coordinating conjunction?
DOUBLE: The term for a word's emotional or implied meaning, and the term for a word's literal dictionary definition.
What is connotation and denotation?
The term for an expression with a meaning different from the literal words. (ex. the cat's out of the bag, it's raining cats and dogs, barking up the wrong tree)
What is an idiom?
The term for the method a writer uses to reveal a character's personality.
What is characterization?
The term for reading a text, wanting to use it as evidence, but rewriting it using your own words.
What is paraphrasing?
The terms for words that have similar meanings and words that have opposite meanings.
What are synonyms and antonyms?