English Vocabulary

Positive tone

• Optimistic

• humorous

• confident

• enthusiastic

• confident

Negative tone

• cynical

• sarcastic

• pessimistic

• disdainful

• critical

• apathetic

• melancholic

neutral tone

• factual

• informative

• objective

• detached

• impartial

• concise

Writing Style: Articulate

• chatty

• circuitous

• conversational

• eloquent

Writing style: Idiomatic (figurative writing - groups of words that have a different meaning)

• informal

• journalistic

• literary

• parenthetical

• ponderous

Writing style: Verbose (using more words then necessary)

• poetic

• picturesque

• epigrammatic

Metaphor

A figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn’t literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison.

Simile

compares things using ‘like’ or ‘as’

personification

giving human traits to non-human entities

“the wind whispered through the trees”

Hyperbole

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally

“im so hungry I could eat a horse”

oxymoron

a figure of speech in which 2 opposite ideas are joined to create an effect

“deafening silence”

irony

a contrast or incongruity between expectations for a situation and what is reality

“a fire station burns down”

allegory

a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one

• animal farm is an allegory for the Russian revolution

assonance

the repetition of sound of a vowel in non-rhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible.

“men sell wedding bells”

anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.

• “Everyday, every night, in every way, I am getting better and better”

Euphemism

a mild or indirect word or expression used to replace one that may be considered harsh or blunt.

“Passed away” instead of “died”

Visuals terms

• color

• position

• contrast

• proximity

• white space

• texture

• hierarchy

Polysyndeton and Asyndeton (language techniques)

• Polysyndeton: repetition of conjunctions (snow and rain and heat)

• Asyndeton: omission of conjunctions (I came, I saw, I conquered)

Enjambment (structural)

continuation of a sentence beyond the line break

caesura (structural)

a pause or break within a line (often mid-line)