punctuation
grammar
literary devices
authors & works
ultimate smarty pants
100

This mark is used to connect two independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction.

What is a semicolon?

100

A sentence with two independent clauses that have not been joined correctly.

What is a run-on sentence?

100

A sentence that spills over from one line to the next in a poem. 

What is enjambment?

100

This author wrote a long poem about a bus accident on a visit to Morocco. 

Who is Charif Shanahan

100

A verb form ending in -ing used as a noun.

What is gerund?

200

You use this mark before a coordinating conjunction joining independent clauses.

What is a comma?

200

In this type of sentence, the subject receives the action instead of doing it.

What is passive voice?

200

This form of a poem repeats the second and fourth lines as the first and third lines of the next stanza.

What is a pantoum?

200

This author used a writing technique that only suggested what was beneath the surface, which he called "the iceberg theory."

Who is Ernest Hemingway?

200

This type of poetic form has 31 syllables.

What is a tanka?

300

Never use this mark between compound elements that are not independent clauses

What is a comma?

300

This form of the verb is used for collective nouns such as audience.

What is singular?

300

The expression of one's meaning that normally signifies the opposite.

What is irony?

300

In this short story by Denis Johnson, two orderlies in a hospital enter a drug-induced alternate reality.

What is "Emergency"?

300

Charles Baxter's theory of making the ordinary seem strange.

What is defamiliarization?

400

You punctuate the title of a poem in this way.

What is quotation marks?

400
A clause with a subordinating word like after, although and because needs this to a complete sentence.

What is an independent clause?

400

You use this literary device when you want to make a closer, more direct comparison between two things.  

What is a metaphor?

400

This poet gave up their job and students to live as a beggar, traveling across the country on foot, writing about their experiences.

Who is Bashō?

400
In playwriting, this is what you call two characters who cannot compromise. 

What is "unity in opposites"?

500
We use this punctuation to enclose any words inserted into an otherwise word-for-word quotation.

What is brackets?

500

A word or phrase that fails to refer logically to any word in the sentence.

What is a dangling modifier?

500

This term describes creative writing about visual art.

What is ekphrasis? 

500

This writer visited our class to teach us about playwriting.

Who is Rolano André Lopez?

500

This is what you want to create when you write a caption to an image that is not literal.

What is "a third thing"?