AP English Language and Composition
Generic Conventions: Common traditions or characteristics of a genre that help distinguish different types of writing (like essays vs. autobiographies).
Genre: A category of literature (like prose, poetry, or drama) that groups works based on their style and content.
Homily: A serious talk or speech that gives moral or spiritual advice, often like a sermon.
Hyperbole: An exaggeration used for effect, often making something sound bigger or more dramatic than it is.
Inference/Infer: To make a reasonable guess or conclusion based on what is said, rather than what is directly stated.
Loose Sentence: A sentence where the main idea comes first, followed by additional information. It feels informal and conversational.
Parallelism: Using the same structure in phrases or sentences to create rhythm or emphasize a point.
Anaphora: A type of parallelism where the same word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive lines or sentences.
Parody: A humorous imitation of another work that highlights its style or content, often to ridicule it.
Pedantic: A style that is overly scholarly or focused on showing off knowledge, often using big words unnecessarily.
Periodic Sentence: A sentence that places the main idea at the end, creating more emphasis and strength.
Prose: Written language that is not poetry, covering both fiction and nonfiction forms.
Repetition: Repeating a word, phrase, or idea to create emphasis or clarity.
Rhetoric: The art of effective and persuasive writing and speaking.
Rhetorical Modes: Different ways of writing (like exposition, argumentation, description, and narration) that serve specific purposes.
Semantics: The study of meanings of words, how they change, and their relationships.
Style: The unique way an author writes, including choices in words and structure, which can be analyzed and compared to others.
Subject Complement: A word or phrase that follows a linking verb and completes or describes the subject (like a predicate nominative or predicate adjective).
Subordinate Clause: A clause that cannot stand alone and depends on a main clause to be complete. It often starts with words like "although" or "because."
Synecdoche: A figure of speech where a part of something represents the whole (like calling a car "wheels").
Synesthesia: A literary technique where one sense is described using terms typically associated with another sense (like "taste the pain").
Transition: Words or phrases that connect different ideas and smooth shifts in writing (like "however" or "also").
Wit: Clever and humorous language that surprises and entertains, showing intellectual skill.