A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices

To go directly to the discussion of a particular device, click on the name below. If you know these already, go directly to the Self Test. Of course, I modestly recommend my book, Writing with Clarity and Style, Second Edition, that contains all 60 of the devices discussed below, and many sidebars on style and writing effectiveness. Get a copy from Amazon.com here: Writing With Clarity and Style, Second Edition. The book has been newly updated, expanded, and improved for 2018. As a bonus free gift to purchasers of the book, a supplement is available for download that contains hundreds of examples of the devices as used in the Bible. Get the supplement here (requires Adobe Reader).

Alliteration	Antithesis	Climax	Epizeuxis	Metanoia	Polysyndeton
Allusion	Apophasis	Conduplicatio	Eponym	Metaphor	Procatalepsis
Amplification	Aporia	Diacope	Exemplum	Metonymy	Rhetorical Question
Anacoluthon	Aposiopesis	Dirimens Copulatio	Sentential Adverb	Onomatopoeia	Scesis Onomaton
Anadiplosis	Apostrophe	Distinctio	Hyperbaton	Oxymoron	Sententia
Analogy	Appositive	Enthymeme	Hyperbole	Parallelism	Simile
Anaphora	Assonance	Enumeratio	Hypophora	Parataxis	Symploce
Antanagoge	Asyndeton	Epanalepsis	Hypotaxis	Parenthesis	Synecdoche
Antimetabole	Catachresis	Epistrophe	Litotes	Personification	Understatement
Antiphrasis	Chiasmus	Epithet	Metabasis	Pleonasm	Zeugma

 

6. Parallelism is recurrent syntactical similarity. Several parts of a sentence or several sentences are expressed similarly to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences are equal in importance. Parallelism also adds balance and rhythm and, most importantly, clarity to the sentence.

Any sentence elements can be paralleled, any number of times (though, of course, excess quickly becomes ridiculous). You might choose parallel subjects with parallel modifiers attached to them:

• • Ferocious dragons breathing fire and wicked sorcerers casting their spells do their harm by night in the forest of Darkness.

Or parallel verbs and adverbs:

• • I have always sought but seldom obtained a parking space near the door.

• • Quickly and happily he walked around the corner to buy the book.

Or parallel verbs and direct objects:

• • He liked to eat watermelon and to avoid grapefruit.

Or just the objects:

• • This wealthy car collector owns three pastel Cadillacs, two gold Rolls Royces, and ten assorted Mercedes.

Or parallel prepositional phrases:

• • He found it difficult to vote for an ideal truth but against his own self interest.

• • The pilot walked down the aisle, through the door, and into the cockpit, singing “Up, Up, and Away.”

Notice how paralleling rather long subordinate clauses helps you to hold the whole sentence clearly in your head:

• • These critics–who point out the beauties of style and ideas, who discover the faults of false constructions, and who discuss the application of the rules–usually help a lot in engendering an understanding of the writer’s essay.

• • When, at the conclusion of a prolonged episode of agonizing thought, you decide to buy this car; when, after a hundred frantic sessions of begging stonefaced bankers for the money, you can obtain sufficient funds; and when, after two more years of impatience and frustration, you finally get a driver’s license, then come see me and we will talk about a deal.

• • After you corner the market in Brazilian coffee futures, but before you manipulate the price through the ceiling, sit down and have a cup of coffee with me (while I can still afford it).

It is also possible to parallel participial, infinitive, and gerund phrases:

• • He left the engine on, idling erratically and heating rapidly.

• • To think accurately and to write precisely are interrelated goals.

• • She liked sneaking up to Ted and putting the ice cream down his back, because he was so cool about it.

In practice some combination of parts of speech or sentence elements is used to form a statement, depending as always on what you have to say. In addition, the parallelism, while it normally should be pretty close, does not have to be exact in its syntactical similarity. For example, you might write,

• • He ran up to the bookshelves, grabbed a chair standing nearby, stepped painfully on his tiptoes, and pulled the fifty-pound volume on top of him, crushing his ribs and impressing him with the power of knowledge.

Here are some other examples of parallelism:

• • I shall never envy the honors which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardor to virtue, and confidence to truth. –Samuel Johnson

• • They had great skill in optics, and had instructed him to see faults in others, and beauties in himself, that could be discovered by nobody else. . . . –Alexander Pope

• • For the end of a theoretical science is truth, but the end of a practical science is performance. –Aristotle

7. Chiasmus might be called “reverse parallelism,” since the second part of a grammatical construction is balanced or paralleled by the first part, only in reverse order. Instead of an A,B structure (e.g., “learned unwillingly”) paralleled by another A,B structure (“forgotten gladly”), the A,B will be followed by B,A (“gladly forgotten”). So instead of writing, “What is learned unwillingly is forgotten gladly,” you could write, “What is learned unwillingly is gladly forgotten.” Similarly, the parallel sentence, “What is now great was at first little,” could be written chiastically as, “What is now great was little at first.” Here are some examples:

• • He labors without complaining and without bragging rests.

• • Polished in courts and hardened in the field, Renowned for conquest, and in council skilled. –Joseph Addison

• • For the Lord is a Great God . . . in whose hand are the depths of the earth; the peaks of the mountains are his also. –Psalm 95:4

Chiasmus is easiest to write and yet can be made very beautiful and effective simply by moving subordinate clauses around:

• • If you come to them, they are not asleep; if you ask and inquire of them, they do not withdraw themselves; they do not chide if you make mistakes; they do not laugh at you if you are ignorant. –Richard de Bury

Prepositional phrases or other modifiers can also be moved around to form chiastic structures. Sometimes the effect is rather emphatic:

• • Tell me not of your many perfections; of your great modesty tell me not either.

• • Just as the term “menial” does not apply to any honest labor, so no dishonest work can be called “prestigious.”

At other times the effect is more subdued but still desirable. Compare the versions of these sentences, written first in chiastic and then in strictly parallel form. Which do you like better in each case?

• • On the way to school, my car ran out of gas; then it had a flat on the way home.

• • On the way to school, my car ran out of gas; then on the way home it had a flat.

• • Sitting together at lunch, the kids talked incessantly; but they said nothing at all sitting in the dentist’s office.

• • Sitting together at lunch, the kids talked incessantly; but sitting in the dentist’s office, they said nothing at all.

• • The computer mainframe is now on sale; available also at a discount is the peripheral equipment.

• • The computer mainframe is now on sale; the peripheral equipment is also available at a discount.

Chiasmus may be useful for those sentences in which you want balance, but which cannot be paralleled effectively, either because they are too short, or because the emphasis is placed on the wrong words. And sometimes a chiastic structure will just seem to “work” when a parallel one will not.

 

8. Zeugma includes several similar rhetorical devices, all involving a grammatically correct linkage (or yoking together) of two or more parts of speech by another part of speech. Thus examples of zeugmatic usage would include one subject with two (or more) verbs, a verb with two (or more) direct objects, two (or more) subjects with one verb, and so forth. The main benefit of the linking is that it shows relationships between ideas and actions more clearly.

In one form (prozeugma), the yoking word precedes the words yoked. So, for example, you could have a verb stated in the first clause understood in the following clauses:

• • Pride opresseth humility; hatred love; cruelty compassion. –Peacham

• • Fred excelled at sports; Harvey at eating; Tom with girls.

• • Alexander conquered the world; I, Minneapolis.

A more important version of this form (with its own name, diazeugma) is the single subject with multiple verbs:

• • . . . It operated through the medium of unconscious self-deception and terminated in inveterate avarice. –Thomas Love Peacock

• • Mr. Glowry held his memory in high honor, and made a punchbowl of his skull. –Ibid.

• • This terrace . . . took in an oblique view of the open sea, and fronted a long track of level sea-coast . . . . –Ibid.

• • Fluffy rolled on her back, raised her paws, and meowed to be petted.

Notice that two or three verb phrases are the usual proportion. But if you have a lot to say about the actions of the subject, or if you want to show a sort of multiplicity of behavior or doings, you can use several verbs:

• • When at Nightmare Abbey, he would condole with Mr. Glowry, drink Madeira with Scythrop, crack jokes with Mr. Hilary, hand Mrs. Hilary to the piano, take charge of her fan and gloves, and turn over her music with surprising dexterity, quote Revelations with Mr. Toobad, and lament the good old times of feudal darkness with the Transcendental Mr. Flosky. –Thomas Love Peacock

Two or more subordinate relative pronoun clauses can be linked prozeugmatically, with the noun becoming the yoking word:

• • His father, to comfort him, read him a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which he had himself composed, and which demonstrated incontrovertibly that all is vanity. –Thomas Love Peacock

• • O books who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! –Richard de Bury

You could have two or more direct objects:

• • With one mighty swing he knocked the ball through the window and two spectators off their chairs.

• • He grabbed his hat from the rack in the closet, his gloves from the table near the door, and his car keys from the punchbowl.

Or a preposition with two objects:

• • Mr. Glowry was horror-struck by the sight of a round, ruddy face, and a pair of laughing eyes. –Thomas Love Peacock

Sometimes you might want to create a linkage in which the verb must be understood in a slightly different sense:

• • He grabbed his hat from the rack by the stairs and a kiss from the lips of his wife.

• • He smashed the clock into bits and his fist through the wall.

In hypozeugma the yoking word follows the words it yokes together. A common form is multiple subjects:

• • Hours, days, weeks, months, and years do pass away. –Sherry

• • The moat at its base, and the fens beyond comprised the whole of his prospect. –Peacock

• • To generate that much electricity and to achieve that kind of durability would require a completely new generator design.

It is possible also to hold off a verb until the last clause:

• • The little baby from his crib, the screaming lady off the roof, and the man from the flooded basement were all rescued.

Hypozeugma can be used with adjectives or adjective phrases, too. Here, Peacock uses two participial phrases, one past and one present:

• • Disappointed both in love and in friendship, and looking upon human learning as vanity, he had come to a conclusion that there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, a good dinner . . . .

The utility of the zeugmatic devices lies partly in their economy (for they save repetition of subjects or verbs or other words), and partly in the connections they create between thoughts. The more connections between ideas you can make in an essay, whether those connections are simple transitional devices or more elaborate rhetorical ones, the fewer your reader will have to guess at, and therefore the clearer your points will be.

9. Antithesis establishes a clear, contrasting relationship between two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure. Human beings are inveterate systematizers and categorizers, so the mind has a natural love for antithesis, which creates a definite and systematic relationship between ideas:

• • To err is human; to forgive, divine. –Pope

• • That short and easy trip made a lasting and profound change in Harold’s outlook.

• • That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. –Neil Armstrong

Antithesis can convey some sense of complexity in a person or idea by admitting opposite or nearly opposite truths:

• • Though surprising, it is true; though frightening at first, it is really harmless.

• • If we try, we might succeed; if we do not try, we cannot succeed.

• • Success makes men proud; failure makes them wise.

Antithesis, because of its close juxtaposition and intentional

contrast of two terms or ideas, is also very useful for making relatively fine distinctions or for clarifying differences which might be otherwise overlooked by a careless thinker or casual reader:

• • In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it. –Samuel Johnson

• • The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. –Matt. 23:2-3 (RSV)

• • I agree that it is legal; but my question was, Is it moral?

• • The advertisement indeed says that these shoes are the best, but it means that they are equal; for in advertising “best” is a parity claim and only “better” indicates superiority.

Note also that short phrases can be made antithetical:

• Every man who proposes to grow eminent by learning should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompense of labor, and that labor, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward. –Samuel Johnson

10.  Anaphorais the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences, commonly in conjunction with climax and with parallelism:

• • To think on death it is a misery,/ To think on life it is a vanity;/ To think on the world verily it is,/ To think that here man hath no perfect bliss. –Peacham

• • In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace. –Richard de Bury

• • Finally, we must consider what pleasantness of teaching there is in books, how easy, how secret! How safely we lay bare the poverty of human ignorance to books without feeling any shame! –Ibid.

• • The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of endeavoring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his imitations, he must endeavor to improve them by the grandeur of his ideas; instead of seeking praise, by deceiving the superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame by captivating the imagination. –Sir Joshua Reynolds

• • Slowly and grimly they advanced, not knowing what lay ahead, not knowing what they would find at the top of the hill, not knowing that they were so near to Disneyland.

• • They are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account. –Samuel Johnson

Anaphora can be used with questions, negations, hypotheses, conclusions, and subordinating conjunctions, although care must be taken not to become affected or to sound rhetorical and bombastic. Consider these selections:

• • Will he read the book? Will he learn what it has to teach him? Will he live according to what he has learned?

• • Not time, not money, not laws, but willing diligence will get this done.

• • If we can get the lantern lit, if we can find the main cave, and if we can see the stalagmites, I’ll show you the one with the bat skeleton in it. be used for

Adverbs and prepositions can anaphora, too:

• • They are masters who instruct us without rod or ferule, without angry words, without clothes or money. –Richard de Bury

• • She stroked her kitty cat very softly, very slowly, very smoothly.

11. Epistrophe (also called antistrophe) forms the counterpart to anaphora, because the repetition of the same word or words comes at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences:

• • Where affections bear rule, there reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil, for ever are subdued. –Wilson

• • And all the night he did nothing but weep Philoclea, sigh Philoclea, and cry out Philoclea. –Philip Sidney

• • You will find washing beakers helpful in passing this course, using the gas chromatograph desirable for passing this course, and studying hours on end essential to passing this course.

Epistrophe is an extremely emphatic device because of the emphasis placed on the last word in a phrase or sentence. If you have a concept you wish to stress heavily, then epistrophe might be a good construction to use. The danger as usual lies in this device’s tendency to become too rhetorical. Consider whether these are successful and effective or hollow and bombastic:

• • The cars do not sell because the engineering is inferior, the quality of materials is inferior, and the workmanship is inferior.

• • The energies of mankind are often exerted in pursuit, consolidation, and enjoyment; which is to say, many men spend their lives pursuing power, consolidating power, and enjoying power.

12. Anadiplosis repeats the last word of one phrase, clause, or sentence at or very near the beginning of the next. it can be generated in series for the sake of beauty or to give a sense of logical progression:

• • Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,/ Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain . . . . –Philip Sidney

Most commonly, though, anadiplosis is used for emphasis of the repeated word or idea, since repetition has a reinforcing effect:

• • They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. –Jer. 2:13

• • The question next arises, How much confidence can we put in the people, when the people have elected Joe Doax?

• • This treatment plant has a record of uncommon reliability, a reliability envied by every other water treatment facility on the coast.

• • In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. –John 1:1

Notice how the main point of the sentence becomes immediately clear by repeating the same word twice in close succession. There can be no doubt about the focus of your thought when you use anadiplosis.