Literary Devices
It’s a direct comparison that says one thing is another, without using "like" or "as."
What is a metaphor?
This part of speech replaces a noun so you don't have to keep repeating a person's name.
What is a pronoun?
This spelling of the homophone "there/their/they're" indicates ownership or possession.
What is T-H-E-I-R?
This is the punctuation mark used to create a contraction or show possession.
What is an apostrophe?
This term refers to the time and place in which a story occurs.
What is the setting?
This device gives human traits to non-human things, like a "stubborn" car engine that refuses to start.
What is personification?
Adverbs are famous for modifying verbs and adjectives, and they usually end in these two letters.
What is -ly?
These are words that have the exact opposite meaning of each other.
What are antonyms?
Dialogue cannot exist without these punctuation marks placed around a character's exact spoken words.
What are quotation marks?
This is the ultimate turning point or the most intense, exciting moment of a story's plot.
What is the climax?
Comic books rely heavily on this device, which uses words that imitate real-world sounds like POW!, BAM!, or SPLAT!
What is onomatopoeia?
A, An, and The belong to this specific sub-category of adjectives.
What are articles?
The Greek root word "Bio," found in biology and biography, means this.
What is life?
This is the correct contraction for the words "will not."
What is won't?
If a story is told by a narrator who is a character in the book using the pronoun "I," it is told from this point of view.
What is first-person?
"I’ve told you a million times to clean your room!" is a textbook example of this extreme exaggeration.
What is a hyperbole?
Words like under, over, through, and between show relationships in space and belong to this part of speech.
What is a preposition?
If the prefix "pre-" means before, this 6-letter word means to view a movie before it is officially released.
What is a preview?
When listing three or more items in a sentence, this is the name of the controversial, optional final comma used right before the "and."
What is the Oxford Comma (or serial comma)?
This is the underlying message, moral, or lesson about life that an author wants the reader to take away from a story.
What is the theme?
If you are "biting the bullet" or "breaking a leg," you are using this type of expression where the meaning isn't literal.
What is an idiom?
The acronym FANBOYS helps 5th graders remember this specific class of words.
What are coordinating conjunctions?
It’s the term for words that sound exactly the same but have different spellings and meanings, like sea and see.
What are homophones?
This punctuation mark is used to link two independent clauses that are closely related without using a conjunction.
What is a semicolon?
This specific genre refers to a short story that uses talking animals to teach a specific moral lesson.
What is a fable?