Rhetorical Devices for Improving Your Style

1.  Parallelism: similarity of structure in a pair of series of related words, phrases or clauses.

  He tried to make the law clear, precise and equitable.
  She tried to define the problem, solve it and eradicate its cause.

2.  Antithesis: the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure.

Though studious, he was popular; though argumentative, he was modest.

It is the best of times, yet the worst of times: we live in unparalleled prosperity, yet have starvation; modern science 
can perform miracles, yet we have war…

3. Anastrophe: inversion of the natural or usual word order.

One firecracker does not a 4th of July make.

4. Parenthesis: insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactical flow of the sentence.

He hit the ball, in spite of his handicap, over the fence.
I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away.

5.  Apposition: placing side by side two co-ordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification of the first.

Men of this kind--soldiers of fortune, pool hall habitues, gigolos, beachcombers--waste their time on trivialities.

6.  Alliteration: repetition of initial or medial consonants in two or more adjacent words.

Already American vessels had been searched, seized and sunk. (JFK)
A moist, young moon hung above the mist of a neighboring meadow.
								(Nabokov)

7.  Anaphora: repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginnings of successive clauses.

	We are moving to the land of freedom.  Let us march to the realization of the American Dream.  Let us march on segregated housing.
	Let us march on poverty. Let us march on ballot boxes…
								(MLK)

	Why should white people be running all the stores in our country?
	Why should white people be running the banks of our country?
	Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the 
	white man? Why?   (MalcolmX)

8.  Epistrophe: repetition of the same word or groups of words at the ends of successive clauses.

In a cake, nothing tastes like real butter, nothing moistens like real butter, nothing enriches like real butter… (Pilsbury ad)

9.  Antimetabole: repetition or words, in successive clauses, in reverse 
grammatical order.

	One should eat to live, not live to eat. (Moliere)
	Mankind must put an end to war--or war will put an end to mankind.
										(JFK)