Style, Clarity, and Elegance
Words should completely and correctly convey your intended meaning into the minds and hearts of your audience.
What is clarity?
Repetition of the initial consonant sounds.
What is alliteration and/or assonance?
A comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as."
What is a simile?
The omission of conjunctions between clauses.
What is asyndeton?
A verb, adjective or adverb that has been turned into a noun.
What is a nominalization?
Holds the thought before the hearer's mind over time, with each successive set of words arranged in increasing importance.
What is climax?
Equating two unlike things.
What is a metaphor?
Words in reverse grammatical order in successive clauses.
What is antimetabole?
The subject expresses the goal of the action.
What is a passive sentence?
Repetition of a word or group of words at teh beginning of successive clauses.
What is anaphora?
Not used to elicit an actual response, but to make a persuasive assertion.
What is a rhetorical question?
A speaker using an outline or bullet points of the speech.
What are partial notes?
Similar ideas having a similar pattern.
What is parallel construction?
An insertion of some verbal unit that interrupts the normal flow of the sentence.
What is parenthesis?
Gives an inanimate object/abstraction personal attributes.
What is personification?
Deliberate repetition of words of the same root, but in a different grammatical form.
What is a polyptoton?
Varying this will help capture your audience's attention.
What is sentence length?
Placing contrasting ideas together, especially in parallel structure.
Deliberate use of understatement, often a double negative.
What is litotes?
Speech delivered entirely from memory.
What is fully memorized?