APLIT - Elements of Style Quiz

Diction

A writer's choice of words

Denotation

The literal definition or a word, the "dictionary definition."

Connotation

Meanings or associations readers have with a word or item beyond its dictionary definition

Abstract

An abstract term is a general term, referring to a broad concept

Concrete

A concrete term is one that refers to a specific, particular thing

Colloquialism

Word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't part of accepted "schoolbook" English

Simile

A figure of thought used to explain or clarify an idea by comparing it explicitly to something else, using the works like, as

Metaphor

A figure of thought that compares or equates two things without using like or as

Personification

A figure of thought in which an animal or an inanimate object is imbued with human qualities

Analogy

In literature, a comparison between two things that helps explain or illustrate one or both

Understatement

Presentation or framing of something as less important, urgent, awful, good, powerful, and so on, than it actually is

Paradox

A situation or statement that seems contradictory but actually is not

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggerations used for emphasis or to produce a comic or ironic effect

Irony

Discrepancy or incongruity between appearance and reality

Imagery

Description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds

Inversion

created by alteration of the standard English word order of a subject being followed by a verb and its object

Tone

Speakers attitude as exposed through stylistic choices

Mood

the feeling created for the reader by a work of literature

Enjambment

poetic technique in which one line end without a pause and must continue on to the next line to complete its meaning

Meter

The formal, regular organization of stressed and unstressed syllables, measured in feet

Sonnet

Poetic form composed of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter that adheres to a particular rhyme scheme

Stanza

group of lines in a poem that share a common pattern of meter, line length, and rhyme

Alliteration

The repetition of the same initial consonant sounds in a sequence of words

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words

Onomatopoeia

Use of words that refer to sound and whose pronunciations mimic those sounds