ib english devices
1. **Ad Hominem**: A personal attack rather than arguing against the idea or issue.
2. **Adjective**: A word that describes or modifies a noun or pronoun.
3. **Adverb**: A word that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb.
4. **Allusion**: A reference to a person, place, or event in history or another literary work.
5. **Anadiplosis**: Repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause.
6. **Analogy**: A comparison between two things for explanation or clarification.
7. **Anaphora**: Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses.
8. **Anastrophe**: The inversion of the usual order of words or clauses.
9. **Anecdote**: A personal story or example used within a larger work to make a point.
10. **Anticlimactic**: When an expectation is created, but something happens to diminish or frustrate that expectation.
11. **Antithesis**: Placing contrasting ideas side by side, often using parallel structure.
12. **Antecedent**: The noun a pronoun refers to.
13. **Apostrophes**: A punctuation mark (’) used to indicate possession or the omission of letters.
14. **Appeal to Tradition**: An argument that claims something should continue because it has always been done that way.
15. **Asyndeton**: The omission of conjunctions between a series of clauses.
16. **Assonance**: Repetition of similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables of adjacent words.
17. **Bandwagon**: An argument that suggests that because everyone is doing something, you should too.
18. **Chiasmus**: The repetition of grammatical structures in reverse order in successive phrases or clauses.
19. **Clause**: The basic building block of a sentence, which can be independent or dependent.
20. **Climatic**: The arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in order of increasing importance.
21. **Colon**: A punctuation mark (:) used after a statement to introduce a quotation, explanation, or example.
22. **Colloquialism**: Phrases used in informal conversation, often associated with specific regions.
23. **Comma**: A punctuation mark (,) used to separate ideas or elements within the structure of a sentence.
24. **Concede**: To acknowledge or accept something as true or valid.
25. **Conjunction**: A word used to connect clauses or sentences, or to coordinate words within the same clause (e.g., FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
26. **Connotation / Denotation**: Connotation refers to the implied or understood meaning of a word; denotation is its literal or dictionary definition.
27. **Dash**: A punctuation mark (—) used to separate a word or phrase after an independent clause or to set off a parenthetical remark.
28. **Epigraph**: A short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme.
29. **Epistrophe**: Repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of successive clauses.
30. **Euphemism**: A milder or indirect word or expression used in place of one considered too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
31. **Ethos Appeal**: Using the speaker’s credibility, authority, and trustworthiness to support an argument.
32. **Hyperbole**: The use of exaggerated language for emphasis or effect.
33. **Imagery**: Words that create pictures for the reader.
34. **Irony**: A contrast between expectation and reality; types include verbal, situational, or dramatic irony.
35. **Isocolon**: A series of similarly structured elements, all of the same length.
36. **Jargon**: Specialized language used by a particular profession or group.
37. **Juxtaposition**: Placement of two items (ideas, words, phrases) next to each other.
38. **Logos Appeal**: Using logical evidence to support an argument.
39. **Loose sentence**: A sentence where the main idea (subject/verb) comes first, followed by subordinate clauses.
40. **Meiosis**: The deliberate understatement of something.
41. **Metaphor**: Referring to one thing as another, implying a comparison.
42. **Oxymoron**: Placing two opposing terms directly next to each other; a compressed paradox.
43. **Paradox**: A seemingly contradictory statement that contains a measure of truth.
44. **Parallelism**: Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
45. **Parody**: An exaggerated imitation of a particular writer, artist, or genre, usually for comic effect.
46. **Pathos Appeal**: Using emotion to support an argument (25% how the writer feels / 75% how the writer makes the audience feel).
47. **Periodic sentence**: A sentence in which subordinate clauses come first, with the main idea (subject/verb) concluding the sentence.
48. **Personification**: Attributing human characteristics to something nonhuman, or representing an abstract quality in human form.
49. **Phrase**: A group of two or more words that express a single idea but do not usually form a complete sentence.
50. **Point of View (POV)**: Narrative perspective; can be first person, third person, objective, omniscient, or limited omniscient.
51. **Polyptoton**: Repeating the same root word in different forms.
52. **Polysyndeton**: Opposite of asyndeton, a superabundance of conjunctions.
53. **Preposition**: Shows relationships among words in a sentence, often illustrating location, direction, amount, or manner.
54. **Pronoun**: A word that takes the place of a noun.
55. **Pun**: A joke that plays on the different meanings of a word or on words that sound alike but have different meanings.
56. **Refute**: To prove something wrong by argument or evidence.
57. **Rhetorical Question**: Asking a question for the purpose of asserting or denying something, not to elicit an answer.
58. **Sentence Variety**: The length of a sentence can increase or decrease engagement with the text or be used as a tool for emphasis.
59. **Semicolon**: A punctuation mark (;) used to connect independent clauses, suggesting a closer relationship between the clauses than a period does.
60. **Shift**: Not exactly a term, but recognizing changes in a text, such as in tone, style, or content.
61. **Simile**: An explicit comparison using the words "like" or "as."
62. **Slippery Slope**: An argument that assumes if one thing is allowed, other, more serious things will inevitably follow.
63. **Subject**: Who or what performs or expresses the verb.
64. **Symbol**: Something that represents or suggests something other than what it is literally.
65. **Tone**: Particular words and their specific meanings, which connote an author's attitude toward the subject.
66. **Unclear pronoun references**: When it is unclear to which subject a pronoun refers.
67. **Verb**: The action or state of being.