daily notes Flashcards
anecdote
a short simple narrative of an incident often used for humorous effect. ex: a essay about the importance of pets and the author includes a heartwarming story from their pet.
argumentation
writing that attempts to prove the validity of a point. ex: the president makes an argument as to why military action should be taken.
allegory
an extended narrative of an incident in prose or verse in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract qualities and in which the writer intends a second meeting to be read beneath the surface of the story. ex: the tortoise and the hare.
annotation
explanatory notes added to a text to explain, cite sources, or give bibliographic data. ex: we annotate texts in class.
antithesis
the presentation of two contrasting images. the ideas are balanced by word, phrase, clause or paragraphs. ex: “to be or not to be.” “ask not what your country can for you but what you can do for your country.”
rhetoric
the art of effective or persuasive writing speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. ex: ethos , logos , pathos
colloquialism
a word or phrase (including slang) used in everyday conversation and informal writing but that is often inappropriate in formal writing. ex: are you pulling my leg? y’all , aint , gonna .
connotation
words suggesting implied meaning because of its association in a readers mind.
consonance
repetition of identical consonant sounds within two or more words in close proximity. ex: boot beat best brag. or even compound words: full-fill , ping pong.
caricature
descriptive writing that greatly exaggerates a specific feature of a persons appearance or facet of personality. ex: the drawing you got done in Florida.
coherence
the “quality” of a piece of writing in which all the parts contribute to the development of the central idea/theme or organizing principal.
aphorism
a short, often witty statement of a principle or truth about life. ben frank was somewhat famous for these ex: the early bird gets the worm.
apostrophe
usually in poetry, but sometimes in prose- the device of calling out to an imaginary, dead or absent person or to a place, thing or personified abstraction. ex: twinkle twinkle little star, welcome o life! and oh holy night!
cacophony
also referred to as dissonance hard, awkward or dissonant sounds used deliberately in poetry or prose : the opposite of euphony. ex: fizz splooosh ting to describe a sound.
connotation - denotation
negative or positive interpretation of a word. ex:
enumeration
used for listing the details or a process of mentioning words or phrases step by step. is used to clarify and detail understanding. ex: In an essay about why her school should have uniforms, a writer enumerates four different reasons, explaining each in detail.
metonymy
figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing that is closely associated. we can come across examples of metonymy both from literature and in everyday life. do not confuse this with a metaphor, does not create a comparison. ex: “The pen is mightier than the sword,”.
anaphora
deliberate repetition of the first part of the sentence. in order to achieve an artistic effect. ex: “In every cry of every Man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban”
- “London,” William Blake
epistrophe
the same word returns at the end of each sentence. stylistic device that can be defined as the repetition of phrases or words at the end of clauses or sentences. ex: Face the dawn, fear the dawn, own the dawn.
