Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Polysyndeton

Although many rhetorical devices have counterparts with the same name and closely related effects in grammatical and linguistic parlance, some devices actually go against proper grammatical forms, and polysyndeton is such an offender. In fact, this device is employed accidentally by many students when they first learn how to construct sentences and paragraphs properly, because it is a commonplace in everyday speech but usually unacceptable in writing. If you have been censured for using run-on sentences in your writing, you have likely used polysyndeton accidentally (and probably ineffectively). After this article, however, you will be able to employ it intentionally, although you should use it sparingly, and then only in creative writing and persuasive oral prose. It might be a valid device, but using it on your next essay or lab report is not recommended.

The prefix poly, meaning multiple or many, will remind you what this device is all about (as well as helping you differentiate it from asyndeton, which will be covered in an upcoming article). Polysyndeton occurs when multiple conjunctions appear in proximity to each other in a given sentence, linking each successive clause, phrase, or word with a conjunction even if these are completely unnecessary. Read the following example, and note the italicized conjunctions: "The sea, and the stars, and the moonlight made my head spin, leaving me neither breath nor sight nor sense, and yet I was content." In the first part of the sentence we are presented with two ands, and as you know from your earliest teachers, only one and should appear in any given list, and that only before the last listed item. In the second part of the sentence we see nor making two appearances, and since this word functions exactly like or, only in the negative, it too should only appear once, before the last item in the list. Your English teacher or professor might greet this sentence with a red pen, but in this case the technical grammatical error is producing an intentional effect which should not be stricken from the passage.

Polysyndeton acts to change the rhythm of a given sentence, causing us to treat each listed item separately, giving it its due regard and causing us to pause more frequently. The listed items also get drawn more closely together as a result of this device, and so we tend to see them more as various aspects of a single entity and experience rather than as totally separate things. In this case, the joining, highlighting, and slowing effects of polysyndeton are further emphasized by a structural parallel within the sentence between the first and second sections, where and is replaced by nor and further items are stacked into the total experience of the sentence.

Another related use of the device is in the exaggeration of a particularly long list of items, as in the following example: "Can you believe she wanted us to bring yams and butter and bread and eggs and jelly and hotdogs and ice-cream?" Here, the speaker is using the repeated conjunction and to emphasize how very many items are being included on the list, and as the italics suggest, she is likely stressing the word and every time she uses it in order to make the effect even more dramatic. Clearly, the speaker is not pleased about the long list of items she has been asked to bring, and her use of polysyndeton reinforces this impression in an obvious and effective way.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Parenthesis

Almost everyone knows that parentheses (note the es ending for the plural) are those little curved lines (also commonly called brackets or round brackets) used to set pieces of text off from each other, like the ones enclosing the words note through plural and also through brackets in this very sentence. However, the term parenthesis also has a broader meaning in the realm of rhetoric, and while those little lines can be used to create a rhetorical example of parenthesis, they are not necessary, as there are many ways to set some text off from what surrounds it.

The rhetorical device parenthesis occurs when a word, phrase, clause, or even sentence is inserted into a sentence in order to qualify or elaborate on something mentioned in that sentence. It need not be grammatically compatible with the words which occur on either side of it, and it can be set off by commas or dashes as well as parentheses themselves. In the following example, parenthesis is used to qualify what comes before it: "All of the people I have spoken to, or at least all those who were of reasonable intelligence, agreed that my plan was the best one by far." Here, we can see that the individual uttering this sentence feels the need to modify his first thoughts with a touch of honesty, although even this ends up being conveniently self-serving. In the lead phrase, he claims something is true of all of the people he has spoken to. However, he seems to think better of this inclusive totalizing statement, and inserts a qualification which explains what he means by all. One may wonder why he just didn't begin his sentence with "All the people of reasonable intelligence," but this would reduce the rhetorical impact of the statement somewhat. In the actual example, he beings with the powerful and all-inclusive all, which immediately makes his statement more convincing. This puts the reader in the right mode from the beginning, so that when he introduces the parenthesis, we read it as a minor qualification, an afterthought to the strong main point. Parenthesis is usually read (and spoken) with less emphasis than the other parts of the sentence, and so it becomes an excellent way to make important qualifications that limit or weaken your original claims seem unimportant. Think of it as a more subtle form of the fine print you see in contracts and television commercials.

Parenthesis can also be used to create humorous effects, as it does in the following example: "The president announced that the enemy (by which he meant Canada) was massing troops (by which meant civilians) on our border, and so an appropriate reaction (a massive nuclear strike) was taken." Although the device is taken to its limits in this example, we can see how effective parenthesis can be. In this case, the author makes sure to separate the actual words and sentiments of the president from his own thoughts on the matter, making it obvious that the president, while not lying, is using hyperbole (enemy, massing troops) and then understatement (appropriate reaction) to make the nuclear strike he is trying to defend seem just. The obvious contrast between the text itself and the comments and qualifications inserted into the sentence results in some subtle political humor, setting up the president's words for ridicule at the same time it presents them. In this way, the usual function of parenthesis as inclusion of afterthought is inverted because the repeated use of the device causes us to focus on it. This makes the parenthetical insertions the dominant aspect of the sentence, made even more so by the fact that these insertions combine to provide us with the opinions of the narrator or author of the sentence. Parenthesis often offers us insight into the true thoughts and feelings of narrators and characters, and while we might be tempted to pass over parenthetical information as less important, doing so can leave you clueless as to the actual aim of a given sentence.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Apposition

Many rhetorical devices share a name with and are based on terms used in grammar and linguistics, and apposition is no exception. Like several of the terms we have discussed most recently, apposition relies on repetition and reinforcement to make its point, though strictly speaking, it is not redundant in the same way. Apposition works with equivalents in close proximity, but each adds something different to the sentence. So, rather than pure redundancy, we are left with two descriptions of the same entity, the first of which usually gives the least information, most often just a name or simple title, and the second of which tells us something more about the named entity, often describing or defining it further.

An example or three is always helpful when learning new terms, and the following sentences use apposition correctly in slightly different ways:

"My father, an engineer, believes that efficiency is the most important thing."

"His brother Bill is really stupid."

"Mary's claim that human life came from apes in the sea has been wildly debated."

Your attention has undoubtedly been drawn to the unusual formatting, so allow me to explain that first. In all three examples, the first term of the apposition is bolded, while the second term is set in italics. Looking at the examples in order, we can see that sentence one begins with an individual, my father. The next part of the sentence set off by commas, an engineer, is a phrase that describes what the father does for a living. Notice that there are no connecting words between my father and an engineer, resulting in a shorter sentence in which either phrase (or more properly both) can be considered the subject. Since both refer to the same actual entity, this poses a problem neither in terms of grammatical accuracy nor with regard to comprehensibility. This example is one of the most common types of apposition, and as we will see in an upcoming article, it also provides a good example of parenthesis.

The second example is so quick and common that it is easy to miss, but if we look closely (especially with the vibrant formatting) we can see that the same principles underlie this sentence as do the previous one. His brother leads the sentence, and this is obviously a label applied to some person. Next, we see the word Bill, again obviously a label applied to a person, more specifically a proper noun. So, because we have two different labels or descriptions which refer to the same thing (that being the subject of the sentence) we have another, more subtle case of apposition. There does not need to be a separation between the appositive terms with commas or other words in order to make an apposition work. As long as both terms take on the same role in the sentence (in this case, both are part of the subject), and restate the entity in question in different terms, it is a case of apposition.

The final example is slightly more complex than the previous two, but it nonetheless qualifies as an example of apposition. Again, the lead bold term, Mary's claim, is a description of or label for something that Mary has stated. The next word, that, links this to what comes next, bridging the gap and making that entire phrase from Mary's to sea one large subject. The bolded terms name the entity in question, while the italicized phrase provides an elaborative description of the named entity. In this example, as in all those above, you can remove either the bolded or italicized part of the sentence and still be saying essentially the same thing. However, by doing so you remove the interesting qualification, and while you might have a sentence that is technically correct, you are missing a layer of meaning that, depending on the context, could be of vital importance.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Pleonasm

Another of my favorite rhetorical terms, probably because of its catchy name, pleonasm is another device makes literary capital out of redundancy. As we have discussed elsewhere, the dominant school of style in writing is focused on the condensation of language into strong, lean forms, without superfluous verbiage. Any words deemed unnecessary or redundant (note the redundancy in my own statement there) should be edited out of existence. This is a fine statement in general, since many writers use far too many words and thus ruin the effectiveness of their message, but if it is too rigorously applied, creative prose ends up looking like print from science texts, and the life is sucked out of the literary work.

Pleonasm is generally considered (when it is considered at all) to be a synonym of redundancy, tautology, logorrhea, verbosity, and every other word and term that suggests something is saying something in a roundabout or repetitive way. More strictly, I would only call a construction pleonastic when it has two elements that reflect each other exactly, or almost exactly, each making the other redundant. As a result, thinking back to the article on redundancy from a previous series, constructions like free gift and over exaggerated are pairs of words that overlap to such an extent that the adjective part of the pair is unnecessary. After all, all gifts are free, and exaggeration already contains the idea of over in itself. As a result, these phrases can be considered pleonastic, but I would prefer to reserve the term for redundant constructions that create more interesting effects, or that serve some purpose.

There are some cases where redundancy is helpful, rather than harmful, to communication. The above examples are widely considered errors, or at least poor choices, in standard English writing. There are times, however, when pleonasm can be very effective. There are certain stock phrases, word pairs really, that are pleonastic to the core, such as law and order, and leaps and bounds. These have become staples in our language, and continue to be used widely and frequently, despite their redundancy. The origin of these commonly associated word pairs rests in the birth of modern English, when authors were writing documents in a highly multilingual society, and were unsure whether their audience would understand a given term. So, to avoid confusion, they would list two terms, one a native English term, and the other the equivalent term with Latin or other foreign roots. In the above examples, order and bounds both have Latin roots, whereas law and leaps are both native English words. Thus, the redundancy served an important purpose, and these phrases were so widely used that they remain with us to this day, still sounding right despite the unnecessary repetition.

I find pleonasm useful when conversing with people who speak English as a second language, as well as students who are not familiar with certain terminology. In both cases, pleonasm allows you to introduce the appropriate term as well as its "translation" into more common English terms, ensuring that you are understood, and allowing your interlocutor or conversation partner to learn something new. Pleonasm can also be effectively used to convey the importance of something, as in the following example: "This letter absolutely, positively, must arrive in Venice on Friday." Here, absolutely and positively are both pleonastic, as the word must conveys that this is not an optional thing, but something which has to happen. However, note how much more emphatic the statement is with the additional words. The sentence might be more concise if we removed the pleonasm, but it would no be so forceful, and the point might well be lost.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Syllepsis

Have you ever thought about what your favorite rhetorical device is? I remember the first time I opened up a dictionary of literary terms and theory, and started reading through. I was fascinated by much of what I saw, but once I read and understood what syllepsis was, I had a moment of revelation, and must have said something like "So that's what it's called! I can't believe it has a name!" At this point, I knew I was destined to spend my life learning and teaching rhetoric; I also realized that I had finally crossed the fine line separating the socially tolerated academics from the outcast adult nerds. If you answered the question leading this article with anything but no, I am pleased to say that you are here on the other side of the line with me. Not to worry, though; if you are careful in public, you can still lead a productive happy life without moving to a cave in the Himalayas.

As you might have guessed, syllepsis is my favorite rhetorical device (though paralipsis is a close second), and the following example might help to explain why: "With one swift motion of his arm, Arnold killed the mood, as well as the waiter." As you might have been able to figure out from the example, syllepsis is a rhetorical device that uses one word to modify two or more others, usually nested in a parallel structure. In doing so, the words to be modified are often of different categories, so that the modifying word has to be understood in different ways to make sense. In the above example, we have the word killed modifying mood and waiter. In the first sense, the word kill must be understood figuratively as part of the idiomatic expression to kill the mood, which means to ruin the positive feeling or atmosphere of a given situation, like at a party or during a lovers' rendezvous. In the second sense, we can see that killed is used in a far more literal and direct way, as the same motion that spoils the party also ends up ending the life of the waiter (which would also serve to kill the mood of the party, of course). The comic effect here arises from the shocking way our expectations are set up and then defied. By using a parallel structure, the author makes us expect that the items set in parallel will be of the same class and stand in the same relation to the modifying word. By crushing this expectation through a witty kind of wordplay, we are surprised and perhaps (if we have a dark sense of humor in this case) amused.

Words with multiple meanings that have little if any relation to each other are tempting candidates for use in syllepsis, as we can see in the following example: "Sandy enjoyed a cool draught on her face, but she preferred it in her belly." Here, we can see draught being used first in the sense of breeze, and then in the sense of beer. This is a subtle example of clever punning, but beware - this is not an example of syllepsis! Syllepsis requires that one word be used to modify two or more words in different ways, and in this case, we do not have the necessary elements. Instead, we have one word, draught, being modified by two different prepositional phrases. This brings out the two senses of the word draught, but it fails to qualify as an example of the device in question.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Chiasmus and Antimetabole

As we have seen in many previous articles, patterning is one of the main ways in which rhetorical devices operate, and by changing the order in which the patterned elements are presented, we end up with different devices that create different effects. Two fine examples of this principle are chiasmus and antimetabole, which rely on general and specific inversion of parallel structures to create novel effects.

Chiasmus is by far the more common of these two terms, and it is even taught in some high school classrooms, often as a broad device which includes antimetabole (though the term antimetabole is never mentioned in these settings). It is helpful to remember that chiasmus comes from a Greek term meaning crossing, which is itself derived from the Greek letter χ (chi), composed of an obvious cross. In the stricter definition (which separates chiasmus from antimetabole), chiasmus is used to describe an ABBA structure, composed of grammatical or semantic elements, but not consisting of an inversion of the same words between clauses. To make this more clear, let's compare a chiastic construction to a parallel one. First, we see a parallel structure: "I love grapes, and I adore pineapples." Each clause presents the same elements in the same order, beginning with the subject, then a verb, then the object. If we change the structure from parallel to chiastic, we get the following: "I love grapes, and pineapples I adore." Here, note that the order of the second clause has flipped, putting the object first.

A second species of chiasmus occurs when words with similar meanings are arranged in the same ABBA manner, as in the following example: "It is easy to hate, and despising is simple." Here, we can see that easy and simple are synonyms, as are hate and despise. They are arranged so that one set of synonyms border the other set which are adjacent to each other, resulting in the ABBA structure necessary for chiasmus. Strictly speaking, chiasmus has no further definitions as a rhetorical device, but anything with an ABBA structure can be referred to as chiastic, such as a comparison essay where you begin with one text when discussing a given point, then finish that point with the other text. The next point begins with the text you used to end the last one, and so on, giving you an extended ABBA sequence, resulting in a chiastic structure.

Antimetabole is one of my favorite devices, as it exploits a chiastic arrangement in the presentation of repeated words in creating witty remarks which are often very memorable. The following example is one I found on a T-shirt that expresses the concept succinctly: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog." Looking at the successive clauses (divided by the semicolon), we can see that the key nouns dog and fight are repeated, and their order is reversed, creating a chiastic structure. Note, however, that since the words that create the chiastic structure are repeated in each clause, this is not technically a case of chiasmus, but rather antimetabole. Looking more closely at this example, we can see that antimetabole can create its witty and memorable effects through a type of wordplay which uses the same words in successive clauses, but subtly alters their meaning and context to create unexpected meanings. In the first clause, we see fight used in its situational sense, as in a battle in which beings (like the dog) participate. In the second, we see it used as a personality trait, as a synonym for bravery, tenacity, or courage. The inversion is doubly effective because in the first clause, the dog is in the fight, whereas in the second, the fight is in the dog. By shifting the sense of the terms, the seemingly impossible reversal (after all, there are not many things which can encompass each other in turn) becomes possible, and creates a memorable line through its reversal of expectations.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Antithesis

Some rhetorical devices are defined in terms of their syntactic structures, as we saw with parallelism, anaphora, and epistrophe. Others are defined based on semantic properties, as we saw in an earlier series with paradox and oxymoron. Some, however, must be defined with regard to both syntax and semantics, and antithesis is one such term. I certainly won't argue against the fact that every rhetorical device has both syntactic and semantic elements, but most rely primarily on one of the other for their definition, whereas antithesis simply cannot be explained in terms which exclude either.

As promised in the article discussing parallelism, many other devices need it as a foundation, and antithesis is a very good example of this. Let's examine the following example of antithesis, and see what we notice about its form and meaning, and their interrelations: "The grass was green, but alas the sky was dark. The ground was fertile, but the air was thick with soot. The village looked pleasant, but the people stank like dung and death." Here, we can see examples of parallelism within each sentence, as well as between all of the sentences. The essential structure of each clause consists of a noun followed by its brief description in the past tense. With such definite patterning, there can be no doubt that parallelism is at work.

This leads us to think about what this patterning is doing, and to find out we must consider the semantic aspects of the entities being paralleled. Looking at the first sentence, we can see the conjunction but dividing the items, which immediately alerts us to the presence of oppositions. The first item, the green grass, is contrasted with a dark sky. The first has definite positive associations, while the dark sky is foreboding. The next sentence pits another positive term, fertile ground, against air thick with soot which is undoubtedly negative. In the final sentence, we see the pleasant village contrasted with the people who absolutely stink. It quickly becomes evident that the parallel structure of this passage is being used to highlight terms that oppose each other, and this is the heart of antithesis. Antithesis is the presentation of opposing terms within a parallel structure, so that the first part of a given parallel stands in semantic contrast with the second part.

The effect created by antithesis in general is conveyed well by the above passage. Each sentence, and especially all three together, present an image of a place which has great apparent potential, but which is far darker and more negative than one might expect it to be. It would of course have been more efficient to merely state what the village is like in plain terms, rather than set up the parallel antithetical structure we have before us. However, it is important to remember that whenever a rhetorical device is employed, a certain effect is desired, and usually successfully created. In this case, as well as in antithesis in general, the presentation of opposing items serves as a powerful contrast to the items which describe the reality of the entity in question. A dark sky, sooty air, and stinking people sound bad, but when they are placed beside positive images, they seem far worse. In the above example specifically, the presentation of such contrasting images in parallel fashion serves to create an air of mystery around the village and its inhabitants, because although all of the descriptive elements do contrast, it is possible for all to exist simultaneously (as the passage says they do), and so we are left to wonder what this town is all about. Finally, note that the second element in each opposition ends up being the focus, and this is characteristic of antithesis in general; whichever element fills the second position will receive the emphasis, and so we get a gloomy vision of the town overall, whereas were the terms reversed, we would see the town more optimistically.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Parallelism

More general than other effects of repetition like anaphora and epistrophe discussed previously, parallelism is a broad device that makes the structures of sentences and clauses stand out through consistent ordering, rather than the repetition of specific words or phrases. In other words, while the aforementioned devices rely on the repetition of a given word or phrase at the beginning or the end of a sentence, clause, or line, parallelism depends instead on the repetition of a grammatical structure across successive clauses or sentences.

In one sense, parallelism can be considered apart from its rhetorical elements, because it is one of the cornerstones of good grammar. Parallel structure is a term used in grammar to describe the proper way of laying out successive items around various conjunctions, with and being the most common. In the following sentence, we see parallel structure used correctly: "The handler trained his lions fantastically with great enthusiasm, his dogs adequately with little excitement, and his rabbits poorly with no effort at all." Here we have three distinct though linguistically complex items listed in parallel fashion. The common stem which is understood to apply to each item, though it only appears before the first, is The handler trained; when the parallel structure is done correctly, you should be able to read these three words in front of each item listed, and form a complete sentence. The example passes this preliminary test, assuring us that, no matter what else is going on here, the sentence is grammatically correct.

Looking even more closely, we can see the parallels between the three items are significant. Each begins with the name of an animal in the plural (lions, dogs, rabbits), followed by an adverb describing how they are being trained (fantastically, adequately, poorly), the preposition with, and an adjective coupled with a noun describing the trainer's level of involvement (great enthusiasm, little excitement, no effort at all). This extended parallelism ensures grammatical accuracy while pleasing the ear, but it also goes much further in affecting how we read the sentence and what we take from it.

One of the most important effects of parallelism is the way it keeps the general categories in question lined up, allowing us to see subtle differences between the items in context. In the example above, we can clearly see a progression occurring on several levels. First, the order of the animals goes from largest to smallest, from regal to rodent. Second, the quality of training goes in the reverse order, from excellent to excrement. Finally, the level of intensity the trainer brings to his work trails off, beginning at the peak and sliding down the sink. Because the items are ordered in a parallel manner, we can see the progressions here very clearly, and although little is stated directly, we can draw many solid inferences from this short passage. For example, the trainer prefers large animals to small ones, and spends most of his time on them, neglecting his duties with the smaller ones. We imagine that if he had rats to train they would rank below the rabbits, and if he had wolves they would occupy a place between the lions and the dogs.

Because of its ability to create patterns and exploit the differences between entities of the same class, parallelism is a favorite device of politicians and polemicists of all kinds. It is an efficient way to draw comparisons between competing ideas, and it opens up the potential for wit. As we will see in upcoming articles, parallelism is a necessary foundation for many other devices; the creation of an established pattern is absolutely necessary if you desire to set up certain expectations and then surprise the reader by going against them, or (even better) by meeting them in unexpected ways. As with most of the devices which operate based on a patterned order, parallelism loses is power if it is overused, and even worse, it grows monotonous. So, use the device sparingly, and it will have the powerful impact it should.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Epistrophe

Since the taxonomies of rhetorical language are so extensive (this series represents only a fraction of all possible devices), it is not surprising that some devices stand in very close relation to others, differing by only a slight amount. I have avoided covering many of these in this series, choosing instead to cover a central term with a given effect and mentioning the very closely related terms in the more general article as subtypes or antonyms. However, sometimes a given device, while structurally very similar to another, has such a different effect (by type or degree) that it demands inclusion as its own entity. Epistrophe is just such an example.

In as far as people know rhetorical terms at all, epistrophe is relatively underused while its sister anaphora is widely known. As we discussed in a previous article, anaphora is the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive textual units like sentences, clauses, or lines. Epistrophe is highly similar, consisting of the repetition of words or phrases in successive textual units, but at the end of these rather than at the beginning. Some of the effects, as you would imagine, are similar, but there is a shift in magnitude which makes an important difference.

For example, consider the following sentences: "The children ate underground, the women worked underground, and we laughed, cried and sang underground. Our people are born underground and we will die underground. Our breath and blood is the underground." This example meets the criteria for epistrophe, as the word underground ends successive phrases as well as all of the sentences. This serves most obviously to make the word underground stand out and demand our attention, but because of its location at the ends of textual units it gains further effectiveness.

In English, much of the emphasis falls on the ends of sentences, since with normal word order, this is where things happen and get commented on most frequently. The subject leads the sentence, but the predicate, which describes the subject or her actions in some way, finishes things off, giving it an added importance. If you think of every sentence as a very very short story or film, it is where the suspense gets resolved and you can connect all that has gone before. Therefore, epistrophe is a device especially well designed to add emphasis, as the memorable conclusion of each successive textual unit is repeated again and again, dramatically extending and underlining the rise and fall of the section of text in question. In the example above, after the first repetition, you begin to expect underground to occur again, and the way you read the sentences changes into a more metrical arrangement to give the repeated word its proper emphasis.

As with anaphora, epistrophe is a good friend of poets and politicians, but it is more common in everyday speech. I think the likely reason for this is that, since it occurs at the ends of textual units, the speaker requires less planning in order to make the repetitions work. The sentence is already in full swing before you need to decide to employ the device, and its momentum can carry you through several repetitions without much foresight or planning. Keep in mind that this device is most effective in the service of emotionally-charged content, and while it can be employed to create humor through wit, it is far better at expressing more extreme and powerful feelings.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Anaphora

For at least the last century, there has been a steady movement toward succinctness of expression in writing. This is at least partly attributable to the modern movement in literature and criticism, which extolled the virtues of the lean, strong, masculine verse, as well as to the rise of science, which demands precision and clarity of meaning. Your instructors likely pick your writing apart for failures in these areas, as wordiness is now considered one of the deadly sins of effective writing. Personally, I do believe that trimming can often make well written poetry and prose much more effective, but there must be a balance between the efficiency of an expression and its persuasive and emotional impact. This is where rhetoric comes is; rhetorical devices are efficient ways to convey viewpoints and information while evoking emotional and aesthetic responses. There is always a more direct way to phrase something than to use a rhetorical device, but remember that persuasion and beauty are other worthy goals which are not serviced as well by unadorned prose.

Anaphora is one device that obviously violates principles of succinctness in favor of aesthetic and emotional ends. This term describes the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive sentences, clauses, or lines, in order to emphasize the importance, magnitude, power, or some other aspect of the repeated word(s). The repetition can be limited to the first word of each textual segment, or it can be as long as the segment continues. In the following example, the anaphora is somewhere between the two extremes: "I need your touch. I need your smell. I need your taste, your voice; I need you more than life."

Under normal circumstances, writers try to vary the words they use in a given section of text, and avoid placing the same words in close proximity to one another, because this can sound clumsy and jarring. However, when anaphora is used, the repetition is so obvious and intentional that it serves to order the entire passage in which it is employed, giving it a songlike or poetic feel. In this example, the author could have chosen to make this list far differently, an example of which follows: "I need your touch, smell, taste, and voice; I need you more than life." This is fine, and entirely grammatical, but it is definitely lacking something. In the first example, the repetition of I need continually brings us back to the depth of feeling the speaker has for each of the things he says he needs. He needs each of these things, and each one is so important that it receives its own individual and complete statement. The pauses required between each repetition also helps the drama of the situation, as you can imagine the speaker taking a breath and summoning all his strength before uttering each item on the list. Note that the third line contains a slight variation, with two items presented together behind a single I need. It is important to remember that such variation is important even when using a device like anaphora, because although the essential structure of the repetition should be maintained to achieve the desired effect, other aspects of the lines can and should be altered to keep the lines flowing, and to make them fresher and less predictable.

Anaphora is a device that you will find only infrequently in regular speech, since it requires a suitably important subject and careful wording to make it effective. It finds its most comfortable home in song and poetry, where the patterned arrangement of leading words is another effect which can be combined with rhyme and a host of others to make the sounds of the words as aesthetically pleasing as the images and sensations the words convey. Political speeches also accommodate anaphora easily, since politicians want to make sure they drive their important ideas deeply into the minds of listeners through repetition and pleasing parallel items.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Rhetorical Question

Unlike many of the terms which will be presented in this series, the term rhetorical question still has a place in the modern lexicon, and most people have some idea of what the term means. A lot of comedy has been created around the term, as every sitcom produced after 1980 has at least one episode where someone answers a rhetorical question as if it were not rhetorical at all. Our everyday speech is also infused with a large number of stock rhetorical questions, and although their constant use has diminished their rhetorical strength, they nonetheless serve as good examples.

A rhetorical question is a statement which looks like a question, but which is actually designed to make a point which will be evident to the listener or reader. In other words, the form it takes is that of a question, but its meaning leaves no real room for any answer but the one the speaker intends. In the following example, we can see a series of rhetorical questions which all point to one obvious conclusion: "How can the government justify the torture of innocent animals? What moral authority do they possess that allows them to rule over the life and death of God's creatures? How stupid must they think we are to offer us money to stop the protests!" Here, it is obvious that the speaker is totally and categorically opposed to animal mistreatment. Therefore, we don't read his questions as questions, but rather as ways of stating his position. Looking at the first sentence, the way the content is presented tells us that the answer to the question has been decided long before it was asked. The words torture and innocent animals all show strong emotion, and a definite bias for the animals and against the way they are being treated. When phrased in this way, it is obvious that the government (or anyone or anything, really) could not possibly justify such actions, since they are presented in language that makes them unjustifiable. The punctuation of the third sentence in the example is also very telling; note that it ends in an exclamation point rather than a question mark, even though it is otherwise presented in the order of a question. This is acceptable, and shows how emphatic, rather than questioning, the rhetorical question can be.

In everyday life, we also have a host of rhetorical questions that we use on a daily basis. For example, if I ask someone "What is the matter with you!" I am not really expecting a response. This question is reserved for times when someone has done something especially stupid, and it has the function of accusing the person of having something wrong with them, rather than sincerely asking what specific difficulty they have. Remember, the word rhetorical in the term rhetorical question indicates that the question is being asked in order to achieve a certain effect, which is the basis of all rhetoric. I am sure many of you are asking why you wouldn't simply make the statement you want to make without using a question at all, and again this goes back to effect. Statements, especially forceful ones, are not inclusive of the listener, since they give a single viewpoint from a single source, and require no real thought to understand. If I instead use a question to make my point, or a series of questions, my tone and sentence structure immediately and automatically prompt the listeners to think more closely of what I have said, and to formulate an answer, even if the answer is evident. In this way, I am enabling them to take my own thoughts, process them, and come to the same (inevitable) conclusions I have. Also, by presenting questions in such a way that only one answer is possible, I am strongly encouraging others to think like I do, since they become immersed in the viewpoint my string of words has created. It takes far less effort to reject a view presented in a straightforward statement than to analyze the problems with a rhetorical question in order to find what underlying assumptions it employs; since there are more layers to cut through in order to see where the problems are, it is far easier and more tempting just to go along with the feeling of what is being said, which is a powerful force in the realm of persuasion.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Zoomorphism

Many students are surprised to hear that for almost every effect which can be created in language, the rhetoricians have given it a name. The origins of formal rhetoric date back to the Greeks and Romans, who made the study of rhetoric one of the most important aspects of education. Several scholars developed detailed taxonomies of the tropes and figures that they had defined, and many of these terms, complete with their Greek and Latin roots, have survived unaltered through the centuries, despite their journey through different languages and cultures.

Zoomorphism is no exception to the above statements, as we can see from its prefix zoo, shared by such words as zoology, and of course, zoo is itself a word which will no doubt help you remember what this term means. As you might have guessed, it is used to refer to animals, and you can be sure that if a word contains zoo, it has something to do with our furry or scaled friends. Looking at the rest of the word, we see further classical origins, as the word morph is used to denote the process of change or transformation. This leaves us with the roughly translated term animal transformation, and while this is not elegant, it goes a long way toward describing what the term zoomorphism means.

Zoomorphism describes the attribution of animal characteristics to humans or humanlike beings (like gods), or more broadly conceived, to anything at all which is not an animal. The tradition of zoomorphism dates back beyond historical memory, as even the earliest religions and cultures tell stories of gods transforming into animals, or appearing in animal form. In Greek myth, for example, Zeus was anything but a faithful husband, and he often made trips to the realm of the human in order to impregnate human women. To achieve these ends without detection, he would often go in the guise of a given animal, like a swan or even a bull. This resulted in some frightening encounters, but the boundaries of possibility in myth are wide open. A famous example of zoomorphism can also be found in the Bible, where Nebuchadnezzar gets transformed into a bovine. Native American and other tribal traditions often feature totems very prominently, although whether this is simply zoomorphism is open to debate. Attributing animal characteristics to a god fits the bill, but if they are granting the animals human and godlike features, this is anthropomorphism. It seems to me like their belief is a combination of both, although before you cite this in a report you would do well to verify this with a native individual.

Aside from the more obvious forms of zoomorphism discussed above, other more subtle forms pervade speech and literature in all cultures. For example, if I call someone a pig, listeners immediately know I am insulting the person, likely commenting on how sloppy or generally disgusting they are. Every language has a whole host of common animal associations, and English is certainly no exception. A sly person is a fox (as is an attractive woman), a hard worker is a horse, a dishonest person is a snake, a coward is a chicken, a blind person is a bat, and a good swimmer is a fish. Based on these common associations, it is also possible to use less direct zoomorphic comparisons to great effect, often through the use of metaphor, as in the following example: "Billy is still slithering through the grass in Florida, but I expect him to show his fangs again when he gets to Toronto." Here, it becomes evident that Billy is a disreputable fellow, as his slithering and his fangs both point to his snakelike nature.

Using Advanced Rhetorical Devices to Surprise and Delight

Introduction

In the previous two series we covered many topics that are essential to any student, and that are important to anyone who does not want to sound completely out of place in the company of educated people. For better or worse, we find ourselves in a time where the focus of educational institutions is the production of individuals who will be able to participate in the workforce, rather than the development and broadening of students' minds. The devices and errors presented in the previous two series, while they may be revelations for many, would have been considered elementary fifty years ago, and anyone who successfully graduated from high school would have been expected to know and use them properly.

As education in North America has moved away from teaching classical content like Latin and Greek, and toward teaching more practical skills and concepts, the study of rhetoric, the backbone of classical learning, has all but disappeared. We are now at a point where students do not know classical rhetoric, which is not all that surprising; what is shocking, however, is that the majority of students do not even know what the word rhetoric means! The only place it survives in popular usage is in the term rhetorical question, and while students do have a good idea of what this term means, rhetorical is not a word for them that can stand on its own.

The situation is what it is, and I do not expect there to be a revolution in educational priorities anytime soon. However, I do believe it is a crime that students who have graduated with a bachelor's degree, who will be in positions of power and authority in our society, do not have the tools (developed about two millennia ago!) needed to delve into the language which powers every move they will make. Students commonly argue against the relevance of rhetoric, claiming that they will "never use it again" once they leave school. My usual reply is that whether or not you use it, it will without a doubt be used around you, and sometimes against you. This might not seem like such a dangerous thing, but we cannot forget that rhetoric is essentially the art of persuasion. Whenever you watch a clever ad or hear an inspiring political speech, you can be assured several rhetorical tactics are being deployed to convince you that you need what is being offered, whether it be a product or a pension plan. If you know what they are and how they are designed to work, you will recognize them when you hear them, and empower yourself to analyze the content of the words without being sucked in by rhetorical lures. I believe the study of rhetoric is valuable in itself, but in this time of all-enveloping information, it can be an important safeguard to the autonomy of individual thought.

Before embarking on this series of articles, I strongly suggest you read through the previous series; these serve as a necessary foundation for what follows here, and without a grasp of the basics, the more advanced concepts will be more difficult to comprehend. The language of this series will be somewhat more challenging at times. Few rhetorical terms are heard outside advanced college classes, but remember that the devices they describe are all around us in everyday speech and writing. Aside from the aforementioned general life benefits, knowing rhetoric in the current academic environment will vault you above your peers, and you can bet the first time you use the term pleonasm or tmesis in a paper, your instructor's comments will be glowing.

The Lowest of the Low

The majority of the items explored in this series, if not all of them, are defensible if you look at the history of the language, or at how they are most often used today. Even the ones that are considered poor grammar by almost everyone have historical precedents which were completely acceptable at some time in the past, or have been used widely for long enough that they can be considered linguistic developments rather than mistakes. At base, there is really no ultimately objective basis for standard English, and so it relies on a combination of history, tradition, popularity of use, and the authority of scholars both past and present. That being said, there are nonetheless some constructions which mark the speaker as uneducated or ignorant, and while this may be completely unjust, it is nonetheless the case. Therefore, to end this series, I present a short list of the worst offences, mistakes that will harm your standing in academic circles and drive your English mark down shockingly quickly.

"Ain't" is perhaps the most reviled word known to educators in English, and from the time you are old enough to attend school, you are strictly warned never to use it. Although it has a long history in the language as we discussed in a previous article, it is no longer an acceptable form, neither in speech nor in writing. It is obviously a substitute for negative forms like "isn't" or "aren't," but even its status as a contraction makes little sense in modern English. After all, what is being contracted? It looks like "ai" and "not" have been combined here, but the first of these words no longer has any meaning or connection to modern speech. "Ain't" is a four-letter word, and should be treated as such whenever you don't want to sound like a simpleton.

Another group within the untouchable class of English errors is the ridiculed past and present perfect forms of "bring," which are "brang" and "brung." There is a long history associated with these words, and it is easy to see that they follow the same pattern as strong verbs like "ring," which is conjugated "rang" and "rung" in the corresponding tenses. However, the form "brought" has come to replace both of these alternate forms, and this has been the case for so long that the other forms have become inappropriate. Even if used in informal conversation, "brang" and "brung" will likely lead you into a good shaming.

One of my personal pet peeves is sadly gaining some popularity, and I have heard it at least 5 times already this week on television alone. The word is "irregardless," and it means "without consideration for the previous point," or in other words, "without regard for something." However, note that the word "regardless" actually does the job in this case, and we can see that the word "regard" combined with the suffix "less" (meaning "without"), already means "without regard." "Ir" added to the front of this term is redundant at best, contradictory at worst, and has likely only arisen because "with regard to something" is a very similar idea to "with respect to something," and "irrespective" is the proper way of negating that term. Now that you know, don't make this mistake!

Finally, we have an example of what is known as a "back construction," which is when a word in one part of speech (say, a noun) is made into another part of speech (say, a verb). This is very common in English, but problems arise when the newly formed word is based on a word that itself is based on a word which already occupies that part of speech. My least favorite of these is the word "conversate," based on the noun "conversation." In reality, "conversation" is based on the verb "converse," a word that has fallen out of wide popular use. So, being unaware that there was already a verb for the job, some creative individual made up a new one based on the noun, and we are left with a longer verb that does the same job as the old one less elegantly. Avoid this, tell your friends to avoid it, and if you get the chance, please tell my friends to avoid it as well. They are sick of listening to me about it, so I need others to help save my sanity.

Bad Negation

Making a statement negative in English is a relatively straightforward affair, especially compared to other languages, like German, which have more than a dozen different ways to make a statement negative. Native English speakers have no problem placing "not" or "no" in the right place to make a sentence say the opposite of what it would without these little words, but there are some more complex cases that are the cause of some very common errors.

The first and most obvious misuse of the negative is a favorite of many teachers and professors alike, and it is known as the double negative. An example which will make your instructor jump onto your desk and strike you in a blind fury reads as follows: "I ain't got no money." First, the term "ain't" meaning "is not" or in this case, "haven't," is universally recognized as poor English. Next, since this term already expresses the negative, no further negations are needed and so "no" is unnecessary. In fact, some scholars argue, when you have two negatives in a single clause, they cancel each other out, resulting in your actually saying the opposite of what you mean. In the above example, you are saying that you do not have no money, which means that you actually do have some money.

Taking a quick historical digression, we can see that the above rules were not always standard English. "Ain't" is a form of "isn't" which dates back hundreds of years, and is still predominant in certain dialects, even though it is officially considered improper. The idea of the double negative, as well, is certainly not a natural native English idea, because Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), the parent language of Modern English, allowed a speaker to pile up negatives, and each one only served to stress how strongly negative the statement was! 17th century scholars undertook a concerted effort to standardize the English language, and so many of the rules we have today which seem somehow unnatural are attributable to this movement, which often attempted to apply Latin forms to English grammar. However, knowing the history of these developments will not get you good grades on your next paper, and although it might make for an interesting class discussion, protesting that your double-negatives have a proud history in English will not save you from the dreaded red pen.

Another very common error in negation comes from the misuse of limiting terms such as "but," which we can see in the following example: "I couldn't help but notice her earrings were made of chocolate." In this use, "but" is a near synonym of "only," and it should always be interchangeable with it as it is in this sentence: "I had but (only) three dollars to my name." As you can see, "but" cannot truly negate a statement; its power is in limiting a number or amount. So, in the sentence ""I couldn't help but notice her earrings were made of chocolate," the "but" makes no sense, and the sentence should be written ""I couldn't help noticing her earrings were made of chocolate." The negation is completed by the "not" found contracted in the word "couldn't," and nothing more is needed.

Another popularly misused limiting term is "hardly," as in the title of the movie Can't Hardly Wait. Although the writers and producers of this film knew quite well that they were making a mistake when they wrote this, it is such a typical teenage misuse that we can see why they used it as the title of a teen movie. In this case, "Can't Wait" or "Can Hardly Wait" is what is intended, the difference being that the first suggests that any waiting is impossible, while the second suggests that waiting will be difficult, but that some small amount of waiting will be possible.

Unnecessary Redundancy

For those of you who already know this one, the title of this article, "unnecessary redundancy" may strike you as a great irony; I have committed the very error that this article sets out to explain. However, since I am now explaining to you that I have done this intentionally, I hope you won't think less of me for it.

To explain what I am talking about, let me first describe how the title of this article is guilty. The noun "redundancy" refers to something extra and not needed, or in other words, unnecessary. The adjective "unnecessary," therefore, is itself completely unnecessary, because "redundancy" already carries the idea "unnecessary" as part of its meaning. So, the article could more succinctly be titled "Redundancy," because "unnecessary" adds nothing to the title at all.

The title example is perhaps the most amusing and ironic one of all, but there are many other common examples of redundancy we see in everyday conversation and writing. In the following sentence, see if you can find the redundancy and make the appropriate correction: "It was 10:00 AM in the morning, and the dog was howling while chasing the cat." In this case, the dog and cat are doing what dogs and cats do, and so there is no problem with that part of the sentence. However, the time in the sentence is written redundantly, because "AM" indicates that we are talking about ten in the morning, not ten at night. Therefore, by deleting either "AM" or the phrase "in the morning," you can remove the redundancy from the sentence.

A redundant construction you have likely heard thousands of times in your life, especially in advertising, occurs in the following example: "Order your SuperBlender now, and receive a complimentary free gift!" The noun "gift" which ends the sentence indicates something free of charge which will be granted to someone; a gift requires nothing to be given in return. Keeping this definition in mind, we turn now to the word "free" which comes just before "gift;" "free" in this case means "without cost, requiring no payment, given in exchange for nothing." So, the phrase "free gift" is redundant, since a gift is always free, and the idea of "free" is included in the definition of the word. Going further, we come to the word "complimentary," which is a near synonym of "free," and means that something is given "compliments of the house," or without charge by whoever is doing the giving. Obviously, this merely repeats the adjective "free," doing nothing to add to the definition of "gift," and so it too is redundant and can be removed. In this case, "gift" on its own would be best. Advertisers might want to make the idea of "without charge" as prominent as possible so that consumers are sure to notice they will be getting something without paying for it, but as far as good usage is concerned, the phrase is just redundant.

In order to check for redundancy, you can employ a relatively simple test to judge whether the adjectives you have used are already contained in the nouns they describe. In the example above, "free gift," consider what the opposite of a free gift would be. The term "expensive gift" or "costly gift" doesn't really make sense in this context. Would someone offer you a gift that you had to pay for? From here, you can ask yourself if there is such a thing as a gift that isn't free. Since there isn't (this would contradict the meaning of the word "gift"), you can be sure that the adjective "free" is redundant.

Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

Read the following sentence, and judge whether it is correct or incorrect: "Walking carefully through the garden, it was amazing to find ten different animals." Made your guess? If you said that this sentence, which seems perfectly normal and clear, is actually incorrect, you understand the common problem of the dangling modifier. Just about any fluent speaker of English could paraphrase the meaning of this sentence accurately; someone is walking in a garden, and this person (or these people) found ten different animals. However, it is precisely the missing "someone" which makes this sentence incorrect. Rendered properly, the sentence could read "Walking carefully through the garden, I was amazed to find ten different animals." Although the difference is very subtle, it is nonetheless very important, not for successful communication (since people will know what you mean in this case), but for grammatical accuracy.

The first example sentence is what is known as a "dangling modifier," which basically means that something which modifies the subject of the sentence is "dangling" without any subject to modify. Looking at the first sentence again, what is the subject, what is doing the walking through the garden? "It" is only a dummy word here, used to make the syntax of the second half of the sentence work. The animals are certainly not walking, but are rather the things found on the walk. This leaves us without any nouns or pronouns to look to, and so we can see that this sentence actually has no subject, and so is not a real sentence at all, but rather a strangely complete-sounding fragment. The second sentence solves this problem, by introducing the pronoun "I" directly after the long modifier which leads the sentence. In cases like this, when you lead the sentence with a phrase that does not contain a subject, always make sure to follow it directly with the subject of the sentence, which will be the thing that is doing the action mentioned in the opening phrase.

Misplacing your modifiers can also lead to confusion and accidental humor, as it does in the following example: "As the criminal ran away from authorities on the train, he was shot in the caboose." Now, this amusing sentence makes what actually happened difficult to discern because the modifier "in the caboose" is misplaced, leaving the reader to decide if the man was shot while he was in the caboose of the train, or whether he was shot in his butt, for which "caboose" is a very common slang term. The way this sentence is written, the latter meaning is actually better supported by the grammar of the sentence, though we can imagine that if we read this in a newspaper we would assume the author intended the former meaning. Avoiding such confusion is possible if you are careful to place modifiers near what they modify, and away from other things they could modify. To make this sentence clearer (although less funny), it could be rewritten as follows: "As the criminal ran away from authorities on the train, he was shot as he entered the caboose." Here, by placing "as he entered" in place of "in," it becomes crystal clear that the sentence is not describing in what part of his body the criminal was shot, but rather his location as he was shot.

Here is another amusing example of modifiers causing confusion and humor: "Swinging from branch to branch, I saw the active monkey smiling and eating bananas." In this case, the sentence is grammatically correct, as the pronoun "I" (the subject of the sentence) follows the lead modifying phrase. However, remembering that the modifier must modify the first noun or pronoun that follows it, it is the watcher, the human "I" who is swinging from branch to branch as he sees the monkey! To correct this error, move the lead phrase to a position after "monkey" so that it is clear what is doing the swinging, or get rid of the "I" completely, and make the sentence entirely about the monkey. Either solution is correct, and will resolve the confusion created by the first sentence.

He / She, They

As we have seen throughout this series, errors in usage range on a wide continuum from the completely unacceptable to the virtually unnoticed, the former being the easiest to correct, the latter being largely unrecognized as mistakes. The use of "they" to create a plural where the singular "he" or "she" would be grammatically appropriate falls into the latter category, since it has become so commonly used in speech and increasingly popular even in writing, both formal and informal. This may be an example of a usage error that will in time become standard, but for now, your stricter English instructors will still pull out the red pen when they see examples of it on your papers and exams.

When you begin a sentence with a singular noun or pronoun, when you want to use a pronoun that refers back to it later in the sentence, a singular form is always appropriate, and putting a plural pronoun in its place is technically incorrect. Read the following example, and try to spot the error, paying close attention to the pronouns: "The teacher is the center of the classroom, though they are often isolated by their authority and their responsibility to discipline the students." Here, the subject of the sentence is "the teacher," which in this case refers not to any particular teacher, but rather to "teacher" taken as a category, considered in a more general and abstract way. Since this is a singular noun, any references to "teacher" throughout the sentence should also be in the singular. Therefore, "they," "their," and "their" in this sentence should be changed to the singular forms "he," "his," "his;" or "she," "her," and "her" to be considered grammatically correct.

Now, of course, we come to the reason why this common error has become so widespread, especially over the last 15-20 years. Substituting "he" in place of "they" poses no problem, nor does substituting "she" in place of "they." The problem has arisen in the wake of continued developments in the realm of feminist and gender theory, which suggest that using "he" to refer to an individual or category of individuals which encompasses both men and women, as was the common practice for many years, shows an unacceptable gender bias which must be corrected. As a result, some authors began using "she" exclusively in this case, while others opted for even more equalizing and inclusive constructions like "he or she," "he/she," or the interesting but not widely employed "(s)he" or "s/he." Since gender in English is considered "natural," meaning that only male and female things get assigned a gender in the language and its structures (unlike, say, French, where all nouns are either masculine or feminine regardless of whether they have any natural gender characteristics at all), the argument for inclusion was tenable, but it complicated certain constructions, and made them thoroughly unwieldy. For example, the example above properly written with gender considerations taken into account would look like this: "The teacher is the center of the classroom, though he or she is often isolated by his or her authority and his or her responsibility to discipline the students."

As a result of these awkward constructions, it became much easier, especially when speaking, to merely pluralize the pronouns, since English plural pronouns are gender-neutral. No one is likely to correct you if you use these forms in casual correspondence or conversation, but in formal writing, this error is likely to be pointed out. To avoid this problem, you can use the long gender-neutral constructions as shown above, or you can be a little craftier and instead change the opening noun to a plural form. So, in our example, "the teacher" becomes "teachers," and you can use the plural pronoun forms throughout the rest of the sentence.

The Semicolon

Although other punctuation is often overused, frequently misplaced, and left out when it is really needed, no mark creates the confusion and fear in students that the semicolon can produce. Most leave it out completely, fearing the thing they do not understand, and the brave few adventurers who believe they know just what it is more often than not get it completely wrong. Hopefully, this article will allow you to sprinkle a few choice semicolons throughout your next piece of writing, all impeccably placed and completely appropriate.

Thinking back to the vague rules you learn in elementary school for a moment (mentioned in a previous article), we remember that a period is a long pause, and a comma a short one. Appropriately, this leaves the semicolon halfway between, a piece of punctuation made of a period stacked on a comma which requires a medium pause when reading a sentence. Knowing how to read a semicolon is not very helpful in learning how to place it correctly in your own sentences, but knowing that the semicolon shares some of the properties of both the period and comma will help you to remember its proper use.

The most common (correct!) placement of the semicolon is at the end of a sentence, just before another complete sentence that is closely related to the first. In the following example sentence, the semicolon is used correctly: "War always leads to many casualties; however, it is a necessary evil." As you can see, the semicolon is placed between two complete sentences, and there are no connecting words needed, since the semicolon itself acts to relate the first sentence to the second. The first sentence here is very closely related to the second, as the second consciously contradicts the first by using "however," and uses the pronoun "it" instead of repeating the noun "war." When two sentences are so closely connected to each other, joining them in some way is appropriate, though remember that using a comma is not sufficient grammatically. A period would work here grammatically, but it would not show the relation between the sentences as well. So, the semicolon is the best form of punctuation for the job, combining the unifying strength of the comma, and the grammatical appropriateness of the sentence-ending period.

Another excellent use of the semicolon is as a divider of items in a list. I know many of you are now asking why you would ever use a semicolon to divide listed items when a comma would do just fine, but there are some cases where a comma is too confusing to be of any use on its own. The following list shows the limitations of the comma: "I have been to Paris, France, London, England, Toronto, Canada, and Tokyo, Japan." Now, if we look closely we can see that the items presented here are not actually all separate entities, but rather pairs of cities and countries. With the punctuation as it stands now, you might be wondering why this person tells you they have been to France after they have already told you they have been to Paris. However, it is also not correct to leave the comma out between the city and the country it is in. Here, the semicolon comes to the rescue by making the pairings obvious: "I have been to Paris, France; London, England; Toronto, Canada; and Tokyo, Japan." In these kinds of lists, as well as those whose items are longer phrases with commas in them, the semicolon works in conjunction with the comma to make the list much easier to understand.

The Comma

I will admit that I was not surprised when I learned that, in many other languages, the comma had a definite and well defined role to play. In German, for example, every time you have a clause, you set it off from the others by adding a comma. In English, however, the rules for comma use are far less definite, and while we do not use them to set every clause off from every other, we often put them in many other places that speakers of other languages would never dream of.

As we are taught in grade school, a period (known appropriately as a "full stop" in the UK), requires us when reading to make a pause before continuing. A comma is similar, but requires a less significant hesitation. This distinction, however, is almost useless when it comes to knowing when to use and when to avoid using a comma, and there is no shortage of children who use commas in their writing whenever they would have to take a breath when speaking as a result of this vague suggestion.

Young children aside, most of us make mistakes with commas by overusing them. In many people's writing, the comma takes the place of the period, colon, semi-colon, and even the spacebar on different occasions. Using it in place of the period results in a fused sentence, which is really two sentences linked by a stubborn comma who won't give up his place to the period, as in this example: "I like the smell of cats in the morning, blue cats smell especially nice." Now, in addition to the obvious problems the author of this sentence has with regard to certain psychiatric difficulties, he or she also has problems with punctuation. There are complete sentences on either side of the comma, as well as an absence of any words (called conjunctions) which could join them together properly. As a result, the comma should be replaced by a period, which sets each sentence in its proper form.

The comma really shines in its function as a divider of listed items, and this is the place where people are most confident in using it. In the following example, we can see the comma used as it was intended: "Yesterday for breakfast we ate apples, oranges, peaches, plums, grapes, barley, and oats." Note the placement of the comma after each item in the list, and the use of "and" only before the final listed item. There is some confusion here as to whether the penultimate (second-last) item, the one that comes just before the "and," should have a comma after it, and there is no standard answer to this problem. I personally prefer to include the comma, as it divides all of the listed items equally, whereas leaving it out seems to unite the last two items more closely, tempting us to consider them as a single item, but this is merely my own opinion. You can go either way with this, but do remember to be consistent.

Although there are a host of other correct and incorrect ways people use commas, this article must end at some point, and so I will finish with a useful tip which will save you some confusion. Whenever a sentence begins with a term like "however," "thus," "therefore," "moreover," "first" (or any ordinal numbers), as well as prepositional phrases like "in the beginning," make sure to place a comma between it and the rest of the sentence. This serves to make your meaning more clear, and show that you know what the comma is designed to do.

The Colon

Ah, the colon. A wonderful organ that is vitally important to have checked, especially if you are a man over the age of 40 with a family history of ...

Although I do think the public service announcement above is a very important one, the colon we will be discussing in this article is the one we see printed on the written page, not displayed in the bright lights of the x-ray machine. Of course, this is not to say that there are no parallels between the two. Everyone hears about their colon so much in popular culture that they think they have a good idea of what it is. Similarly, the colon of punctuation is seen and used so frequently that people believe that they know all about it. In both cases, however, people are lulled into a false sense of security, and in grammar as well as life, checking your colon is of the utmost importance.

All unfortunate medical parallels aside, the colon is one of those pieces of punctuation, much like the comma, that people believe they can just sprinkle wherever they like to create whatever effect they are trying to achieve. Despite this popular and persistent belief, however, there are definite times and places where the colon is appropriate, and many more when it is not. Like all forms of punctuation, there are rules regarding its use, and a failure to obey them results in misusages your teachers and professors are sure to notice.

The first correct use of a colon is as a way to introduce a list of items, but note that it must be placed only at the end of a complete sentence, as in the following example: "We had many items for sale that day, which included the following: shirts, socks, slippers, sandals, and scarves." Many people prefer to use a shortcut when creating lists, and employ the colon not at the end of a sentence, but in the middle of one that requires no colon at all, like this one: "We had many items for sale that day, including: shirts, socks, slippers, sandals, and scarves." This may seem right to many people, but the colon is actually superfluous (extra or unnecessary) in this instance. You can remove it completely, and you are left with a single sentence that is a properly formatted list.

A colon can also be used to introduce an example, and the same guidelines apply. It must be preceded by a complete sentence, and if not, it is likely not necessary. Reading through the examples I have provided in this article (as well as the rest of this series), you can see many good examples of how to correctly use a colon. Keep in mind that when the colon is used in this way, it is useful to make the example a full sentence as well. This is not necessary, but it often sounds and looks better on the page. Also, it allows (actually, requires) you to begin with a capital letter after the colon. If you do not follow the colon with a complete sentence, make sure not to use a capital letter to begin the word or phrase in question.

One final point to remember here is a formatting issue which will save you grief and grades on your assignments and papers. In North America, we tuck most of our punctuation into our quotation marks, as you can clearly see in this example:

"I like you," Rose commented to Bill, "but I don't know how to love you."

Semicolons are treated just like commas and periods, tucked nicely inside, but the colon is a rebel. Always make sure to leave them outside the quotation marks, and you will likely put a smile on your teacher or professor's face.

Number, Amount

Most of the errors mentioned so far in this series are either so subtle that we don't often notice them in speech (like misuses of "who"), or absolutely unnoticeable in speech so that we can only see them in writing (like the commonly confused homonyms "to," "too," and "two.") However, some errors are easily noticeable in both speech and print, and the confusion between the correct uses of the words "number" and "amount" happens so often in so many diverse media that I don't remember going a day without hearing such a misuse since I learned the rule some time in high school. I feel at this point I must post a warning to anyone who wishes to read further: if you do not want your great days to be made a little darker, and your darker days to be made absolutely black, do not continue reading. Once you know this rule, you can never unremember it, and you will hear it so often that you may just be driven slowly insane, feeling like you are the only one who knows the truth, alone in a world gone mad.

All melodramatics aside, reputable newspapers and respected major networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and even the Canadian CBC make this error regularly in their nation-wide newscasts, the programs which are supposed to be standard English's last stronghold in the world of television. Are you guilty of this error? Read the following sentence and decide for yourself if it is right or wrong, as well as your reasons why: "The amount of refugees fleeing the tiny war-torn country is staggering." If you guessed that this sentence was right, you are wrong, but you are certainly not alone.

The reason this sentence is not technically correct is that it uses the word "amount" where the word "number" is actually correct. The following two sentences show each used in its proper place:

"The amount of water flowing out of the tiny war-torn country is staggering."
"The number of refugees fleeing the tiny war-torn country is staggering."

Notice that these sentences are similar to each other and to the incorrect example sentence above, but they have an essential difference in the subject. In the sentence featuring water, the word "amount" is properly used to describe its magnitude, whereas in the sentences using refugees, "number" is the proper word. The difference is imperceptible if you don't know the rule, but the distinction rests on the difference between count and non-count nouns.

A count noun is one that, well, can be counted. Refugees, regardless of their numbers, are entities that can be counted, and even if we have no idea of the precise number referred to in the sentence, that fact that they can be counted is all that matters. Most count nouns also end in an "s" in the plural, as is the case above, and so this is an excellent hint that "number" should be used rather than "amount."

Non-count nouns, on the other hand, as you would expect cannot be counted. They can be measured, compared, and described in many ways, but counting isn't a concept that even makes sense when applied to them. After all, what would it mean to count water? Another way to identify a non-count noun is to employ the opposite of the "s" plural ending rule mentioned above. Try adding an "s" to the plural of a non-count noun, and you will quickly see that it makes no sense. After all, what would it mean to have many waters, or a number of dirts? Do not, however, fall victim to this "s" shortcut, for there are some count nouns which have odd plurals that do not include an "s," like "deer" and "oxen." Use the final "s" as a hint, but remember, if you can count it, use "number," and if not, use "amount."

Singular and Plural Verb Agreement

Something that new speakers of English have an especially hard time with is the odd rule that forces us to add an "s" to the ends of many verbs in the third person singular form. Again, this sounds complex, but it really just means that when "he," "she," "it," or "one" is the subject of a given verb, we add an "s" to the end of that verb. The verb "to eat," for example, is conjugated in the present tense as follows: I eat, you eat, he eats, she eats, it (one) eats, we eat, you (plural) eat, they eat. Notice only the third person singular forms require this modification, and this baffles many new learners of English because they learn to associate the "s" with making plurals very early on, and in this case, it is only used on some verbs in a singular form. When comics do impressions of foreign speakers, they often use this common error to get a laugh, in sentences like "He talk too fast!" The impressions may be highly exaggerated in general, but in the case of verb agreement, they are largely accurate.

Almost all native speakers get this right every time, and it seems very natural. However, there are some difficult, counterintuitive cases that must be learned and practiced so that they can become natural. Take, for example, the following sentence: "The group of swans fly south for the winter." Is this right? The only way to tell is to examine the sentence, and to see if the verb agrees with its subject, which is not as straightforward a process as it may seem. In this case, the verb is the easier of the two entities to locate because it must be "fly," as that is the only verb in the sentence. Now, we have to ask ourselves, what exactly is doing the flying? It is obvious that it is the groups of swans that is flying, and since there are many swans, the proper verb form is "fly," like in the plural "they fly," as opposed to the singular third person "it flies." So, the sentence must be right.... Unfortunately, this very common and seemingly solid reasoning leads to the wrong conclusion every time.

Thinking back to previous articles, we can recall that the subject is usually in the first position in a sentence, and that the subject never follows a preposition. Looking back to the example sentence, we can see that the first position is occupied by the phrase "the group." The only other contender for the role of subject in the sentence is "swans," but since this word is preceded by a preposition, it is instantly disqualified from consideration. Therefore, the subject of the sentence is "group," and although this noun seems to refer to many things, because it treats them as a single whole, it is a singular noun. As we know, the third person singular form of the verb "to fly" is "flies" (as in "it flies"), and so the sentence should read "The group of swans flies south for the winter." This may sound wrong, but it is absolutely correct. Once you have the subject of the sentence (in this case "group") ask yourself "how many of these things (groups in this case) are there in the sentence: one, or more than one? This takes the focus off the plural swans which don't affect the verb, and places it on the subject. In this case, there is only one group, so the verb is modified for a third person singular subject.

As a final note, remember that "none" is considered a singular noun as well, so that the sentence "None of the swans eats flowers" is correct. To remember this, always replace "none" with "not one" in your head, and this should make the proper form of the verb much easier to remember.

Strong Verbs

As we have discussed many times in this series already, native English speakers in general have an excellent intuitive sense of the language, but are in some cases unable to converse about it in a technical way like a non-native speaker can. As a result, certain complex rules about the language are easy to miss, and understanding why a mistake has been made can be difficult, especially when the incorrect construction sounds right. In the case of strong verbs, I doubt very highly that most of you reading this article, nor your friends and peers, have much of an idea about what a "strong verb" might be, and this is certainly not your fault. I didn't learn it myself until I began studying foreign languages like German, where the distinction between strong and weak verbs is important for learning the language. However, note that although it is less important in English, knowing what a strong verb is and how it is conjugated properly makes a difference in the quality of your writing and speech, and will allow you to avoid the common misuses that plague so many students without their knowing it.

Most English verbs are known as "regular," meaning that they go through the same transformations we expect for most verbs. In English, this means that the verb changes its ending to reflect its tense, as in the case of the regular verb "to walk." "Walk" is the present tense form, "walked" is the past tense form, and "have walked" is the present perfect (which is really more like a kind of past tense). The important thing to remember here for regular verbs (also known as weak verbs) is that only their ending changes in the past and any tense that requires an auxiliary verb (like "have" or "had") by adding an "ed." Nothing about the stem of the word changes, and so the rule is remarkably easy to remember.

However, things get more difficult when it comes to the strong verbs which are the focus of this article. The weak verbs are perfectly predictable and easy for anyone to learn, but the strong verbs change in ways that are more complex and less predictable. A fine example of a strong verb which causes some difficulty is "to drink." Now, I have never heard anyone who spoke English as their first language make the mistake of saying something like "I drinked too much last night" because this is a very common strong verb and this construction simply sounds terrible. However, I have heard people ignoring the auxiliary form of the verb completely, and this is happening to such a degree that I feel it will not be long before this verb has two, rather than three, principle parts.

The three proper forms of the verb are "drink," "drank," and "drunk," and we can see them in their proper uses in the following sentences:

"I drink far too much every day."
"I drank eight glasses of water yesterday for my diet."
"I have drunk only sparkling water for the last five years."

The first two examples look and sound right to most people, but the third form seems strange to many. That is because, over time, the third form of most strong verbs has been neglected, and the second form has taken its place in everyday conversation, and even in writing in some cases (as we have seen with "to drink"). This is becoming more widely accepted, but if you have a teacher or professor who demands exactness, make sure that whenever you are dealing with a strong verb when it is in company with an auxiliary, use the third form.

Could of, Would of, ...

There are some infractions against standard English usage which hardly count as infractions at all anymore, like ending a sentence with a preposition, using "will" where "shall" is correct, neglecting "whom" in favor of "who" in all cases, and splitting an infinitive. Many of these are borderline cases, and depending on how sensitive your grammar detection skills are, and how much you care about the finest details, you may or may not mind how the language has developed. However, there are some misusages that, no matter how common and widespread, will always, I repeat always make educators wince. These kinds of errors are so blatantly based on a misunderstanding that their use will certainly be noticed, corrected, and pointed out for the education of others, and the shame of the offending individual. The improper use of "of" in phrases such as "could of" and "would of" is an excellent example of this kind of mistake, and if you value your reputation in the minds of your teachers and professors, you will never get this wrong in front of them again.

I have received many emails and read some papers that had sentences much like the following: "I would of got there sooner, but I had to eat first." The meaning of this sentence is still clear to any native English speaker who reads it, because it sounds like the sentence it is supposed to be, but I am afraid a non-native speaker who has a reading but no real speaking knowledge of the language would be scratching her head at this strange construction. Why is this? The problem rests squarely on the trespassing preposition "of."

As the non-native speaker would know, English often uses the word "have" to create different verb forms and tenses. It is used to indicate a past time when it is combined with another verb, and in the cases we are discussing, it is used to create a form known as the conditional past. So, when I say something like "I should have brought an umbrella," the verb "should" is a conditional one, suggesting the possibility of some action that did not occur (but which could and should have). The verb "have" acts as a helper or auxiliary verb in this case, placing the conditional action in the past. Non-native speakers might get the verb form wrong, as it is a fairly complex one and involves making changes to three different words in the sentence, but they would not ever substitute "of" for "have."

The reason for this is that non-native speakers learn in a manner that combines text with writing, and so they see the forms of the verbs written as soon as or even before they hear them. So, they know that "have" is a word that can changes the tenses and forms of verbs, whereas "of" has no such power, and would never, ever be used in such a situation. Native speakers, on the other hand, hear the language first, and only learn to write it later. This means that we have a tendency to give priority to the sounds of words, and we have a harder time making written distinctions between words that sound the same or very similar. In this case, contractions make the confusion even easier to understand: "Could've" and "Could of" sound very, very similar if not identical in the flow of a sentence, and so it is no surprise that speakers mix the two up in their heads.

However, note that, although the confusion is understandable, it is nonetheless inexcusable, and anyone who has bothered to learn to write at all would do well to make this distinction. Any of these forms using the word "of" instead of "have" are wrong without exception, so this is one of the most straightforward and easy to remember rules of all.

Who, Whom

Over time, distinctions which were once strictly kept in a given language cease to be important, and new distinctions arise that previously had no place. One excellent example of this phenomenon is the difference between "will" and "shall": currently, very few native speakers use the word "shall" at all, and instead use "will" in every case where either would be used in the past. A word that is going in the same direction as the almost extinct "shall" is "whom;" it is still active in the vocabulary, but it is often misused, and once it becomes completely interchangeable with "who," it will very likely fall by the wayside.

The distinction between "who" and "whom" is similar to that between the subjective and objective case pronouns discussed in a previous article. "Who" and "whom" are similar, but they are also considered interrogative pronouns, or pronouns used primarily for questions. Let's begin with a simple, straightforward example sentence: "Who ate the cookies?" This sounds correct to native speakers, and you will not find many people incorrectly using "whom" in this type of sentence. The first position in the simple English sentence is usually the subject position, and this example is no exception. Even though we have no idea whom the "who" in the sentence refers to, it is nonetheless the subject of the sentence, as it is the thing that does the eating of the cookies. Whenever you are trying to determine which form of the word to use, if it will be placed in the subject position, make sure to use the subjective "who" form.

"Whom," on the other hand, is used in objective situations, which means it will seldom (properly) be found in the lead position of a sentence. The following sentence provides a good example of the word in its proper place: "Billy sold whom his car?" In this case, Billy is the subject (because he is the one who is doing the selling), the car is the thing he is selling, making it the direct object, and "whom" is the indirect object, because it is receiving the direct object. Another case where "whom" is the right choice arises in the presence of propositions, as in all of the following sentences:

"Whom did you buy those flowers for?"
"Shelia was the woman for whom I bought the flowers."
"Whom are you afraid of?"
"Officer Rick is the man of whom I am afraid."

Note the position of the preposition in all of these sentences; it comes well after "whom" in the first and third sentences, and before it in the second and fourth. I did not mix these up accidentally, but rather to show an important point which should help to identify when "whom" should be used. Properly speaking, prepositions (note the prefix pre especially) should come before the pronoun in every case, making the first and third sentences technically incorrect. However, prepositions are so commonly placed at the ends of sentences that sometimes those constructions are simply more widely accepted than their very formal sounding counterparts.

However, this is where some slippage in the use of "whom" arises. If I see or say the preposition before the interrogative pronoun, I will know which form of it to use very readily (whom). However, if the preposition moves to the end of the sentence, I will be very tempted to use "who" instead, especially in the case of sentence three when it is in the first position of the sentence. However, in every case where you are having difficulties, find the subject of the sentence, and see whether the "who" of the sentence is doing anything, or is instead having something done to it. If it is doing the action, "who" is right; if not, use "whom" instead.

Objective Case Pronouns

Although the title of this article sounds intimidating to those without any background in grammar, linguistics, or case-dependent languages, "objective case pronouns" is merely a technical way of referring to words like "me," "them," "her," "him," and "us," which are used in place of their subjective counterparts "I," "they," "she," "he," and "we." Most times, native English speakers have little difficulty using the right word in the right place, because they have an intuitive knowledge of which form of the word sounds right in a given situation. However, there are some notable occasions when knowing which to use becomes confusing, and even the best speakers and writers sometimes get things wrong. All of the rules and examples below apply to each pair of prepositions listed above, and you can interchange them without worry.

Some languages have what is known as a case system, which means that (among other things not relevant to this article) pronouns change form depending on their role in a given sentence. Latin and German are prime examples of such languages, which makes sense when you consider that English is comprised of a largely Germanic structure and a significantly Latinate vocabulary. To clarify this with an example, consider the English personal pronoun, "I": "I walked to the store." This is the correct place for I, because it is the subject of the sentence, or in other words, the thing in the sentence which does something. On the other hand, we use the word "me" in other situations where it is not the subject of the sentence, as in the following instance: "Billy took me to the park." Here, Billy is the subject, as he is the thing doing the taking, and I (or "me" in this case) am the thing that Billy is taking. In this case, "me" is called an object in the sentence (more specifically, the direct object), and that is where we get the term "objective" found in the title.

There is also another time when the objective case is appropriate, and that is when the pronoun follows a preposition. To refresh your memory, a preposition is one of those (usually) small words that indicate a place or position, like "in," "to," "by," "near," "around," "behind," "under," "against," "for," and many others. When a pronoun follows a preposition, using the objective case form is appropriate, as we can see in the following sentence: "The money matters more to me than the glory." Looking closely, we can see that "the money" is the subject of the sentence (it is the thing that matters), whereas "me" follows a preposition, disqualifying it for consideration as the subject. So, "me" must be the proper form. The most important thing here is not to fall victim to overcorrection. Most people know that it is improper to use "me" in the subject place, as in "Me and Jill ate some pizza," but it is equally wrong to use "I" in the object position, as in "There is tension between Ted and I." This last usage is very common, but the proposition "between" indicates that "me" must be used here.

The most counterintuitive situation arises when we have a comparative sentence, like "Rick is taller than she." She? This sounds wrong to many native speakers, but always remember to end such sentences in your head with "is." "Rick is taller than she is" sounds perfectly correct, and it will guide you to the correct form in these comparative situations. Finally, being verbs can be tricky, as in this odd-sounding sentence: "The thief is he!" "Him" sounds more normal, but when we see a being verb between the subject and the pronoun, the pronoun must be in the subjective case. To remember this, or even to make it sound right, simply reverse the order of the sentence: "He is the thief!" sounds perfectly correct, and it means the same thing. Remember that the word "is" or any form of the verb acts as an equals sign between the subject and the thing it is likened to, so this reversal is completely valid.

Emphasis Quotes

Although this series, as you can see displayed clearly in its title, is focused on not using the wrong word, there are some other ways to go wrong in your writing that count as common misuses as well. Quotation marks are not themselves words of course, but they keep such close company with them that any errors you make using them will have a definite impact on your writing, making it confusing, sloppy looking, or both.

A first point for all of you who have teachers or professors who are sticklers for correct usage is that "quotation mark" is the correct term for those little lines which we see surrounding the word "quotation mark" in this sentence. Many people refer to these simply as "quotes," as in, "I made sure to put quotes around the titles of poems in my last essay." This is widely accepted, and not many people will notice the problem if you do this, but if you are dealing with a true grammar drill sergeant, keep it in mind.

There are many proper uses for quotation marks, the most obvious of which is to enclose a direct quotation. In any essay you write, it is vital that anything you take directly from another written document be surrounded by quotation marks, clearly separating your words and ideas from those of another. In works of fiction, authors also use quotation marks to show where characters are speaking directly, as opposed to the voice of the narrator which is not in quotation marks (unless he or she is involved in a direct conversation with another character and is reporting that as it happened). Two final straightforward uses of quotation marks occur when naming the titles of poems, short stories, essays, and articles, as well as when referring to a word, term, or letter when it is being referred to as such. For example, if I am speaking about the "a" sound in the word "had," the quotation marks are used as they appear here.

The quotation mark also operates in more dubious ways, and using them in cases other than those listed above can be trickier. One such use occurs when authors employ what are known as "scare quotes." These are used to indicate that the author is aware that the term in quotation marks is offensive, not considered appropriate, or at least problematic. In the following example, we can see what the author thinks of the term wrapped in scare quotes: "I have often been accused of having 'gay' taste in movies, but the people using this term are not speaking about sexual orientation. Something is 'gay' apparently when it is considered stupid, silly, or pathetic, and the rise of this term with this meaning in youth culture is both puzzling and unfortunate." The author clearly does not agree with the term as it is being used, and the scare quotes make this clear by distancing the author from the term, and showing an awareness that it is inappropriate in this situation.

A related device is known as "air quotes," often used in conversation and sometimes in writing. This is a borderline case, as some purists disapprove of this use in writing, whereas other professionals see it as acceptable. When used in this manner, the quotation marks indicate that the quoted term is not really the thing it seems to be, as in the sentence "The 'meatloaf' we had at the cafeteria looked more like a living thing than a meal." Here, the author uses quotation marks to cast doubt on whether the meatloaf was actually even meatloaf, and we assume from the rest of the sentence that it was not.

A final and frustrating use of the quotation mark is for emphasis, but this is not considered acceptable usage at all, and using them for these purposes marks the writing in which it appears as amateurish at least. This is most often seen in advertising, though it also unfortunately comes up in many other more formal kinds of writing. Take the following slogan for a take-out restaurant as an example: "Our wings are the 'best' in town!" Here, the owners are trying to highlight the word "best," but what they end up doing is causing us to wonder if "best" is surrounded by scare or air quotes, totally destroying the intended effect. When you want to stress something, use italics, or even bold font, but never, ever the quotation mark.

"Literally"

Language, the constantly evolving organism that it is, is transformed by many forces, one of the most powerful of which is the common adoption of what current standards consider an error. Also, although many teachers and professors believe this is a symptom of the times, where standards are lowering and attention to detail is lacking, the phenomenon is likely as old as standardized language itself. For instance, in the 19th century, some authors were criticized for using the term "necessities" where "necessaries" was the correct word for the job. Now, as you well know, "necessities" is the standard term, and "necessaries" has been all but forgotten.

However, since it is still the responsibility of educators, as the unofficial legislators of correct usage, to uphold the standards they have learned and set, you will undoubtedly be corrected and marked down for using certain terms the wrong way. Recently, one such term has become so pervasive that it is not recognized as an error by many, but I assure you that using it will likely make your teachers and professors shed at least a single tear, and I will admit it always makes my blood pressure rise a little when I hear it. The word is "literally," and while the word has some very useful applications, the most recent transformation it is undergoing threatens to undermine its meaning altogether.

"Literally" is closely related to the term "literal," and while both sound like the words "literature" and "literary," they actually have an opposing meaning. "Literature" and "literary" both suggest forms or styles of expression, especially writing; both also suggest something is artistic and fictitious, and not likely to be scientific truth. "Literally," on the other hand, is used to suggest that something is completely true, that things are how you say they are. This meaning of the word is the antonym (the opposite) of "figuratively," which indicates the use of a figure of speech, and indicates that what is being said did not really happen.

Properly speaking, the word "literally" is used when you want to indicate that what you are saying is not being exaggerated or invented in any way. For example, if you saw an enormous orange at a science fair, you might later report to your friends, "I saw this orange at the science fair that was literally the size of my head!" Here, the word literally serves a useful purpose, because without it, people would assume that you were exaggerating. A second, more subtle and witty use of the word "literally" occurs when you want to take a well-known expression, and confer its literal meaning on it. In this example, a referee is speaking to a friend of his:

Referee: "At the party last night the first thing I did was wet my whistle!"

Friend: "Yeah, literally! Bob tells me he saw you swimming with your uniform and whistle on!"

To wet your whistle means to have a drink, usually alcoholic. Here, the referee is using the expression in an unexpected way. In this case, we expect him to be speaking of having a drink, but he literalizes the expression, creating a humorous effect.

There is, however, a new way of using "literally" which is based on a misconception of what the word actually means. The following example is telling: "The comedian was so funny I literally died laughing!" Now, the reason people use "literally" in this way is because they have mistaken the meaning of the word. In the correct examples above, "literally" is used to make certain the listener knows the speaker is not kidding, and it serves to intensify the statement, making it more powerful. As a result, people mistakenly assume that "literally" is merely an intensifying expression, and so use it in situations where it is impossible. In time, people who have heard others use it mistakenly adopt the new way of using it, and the term loses its specificity, as well as its original meaning. The process is underway and is likely irreversible, but if you are reading this, that means all hope has not yet been lost.

Their, They're, There

Another group of words commonly confused because they are homonyms is the trio "their," "they're," and "there." Unlike some of the other examples we have seen so far in this series, all three of these items are routinely confused with one another, likely because all three are very commonly used in everyday conversation and correspondence, and because none of them has a meaning that makes it stand clearly out from the others in such an obvious way as, for example, "two" stands out from "too" and "to." However, by remembering a few simple facts about each of the three forms of the word, you will be able to distinguish the right form every time without difficulty.

Turning first to "their," it is important to remember that this word is the third person plural possessive form of the pronoun "they." That is a mouthful, but it merely means that it is used to show a that group of people owns something, as in the following example: "Their pet wolf is a danger to the community, but compared to their gun collection, the wolf seems harmless." Like the word "your" discussed in a previous article, "their" is only used to show that a group of people owns something: if you ask yourself who owns what in a given sentence where you want to use "their," and you cannot come up with an answer because no one owns anything, then "their" is the wrong form to use.

The second form of this word, "they're," again like the word "you're" from the previous article, is a shortened form of two words, also known as a contraction. Remember that the apostrophe is not only used to show possession, but also stands in place of omitted letters in most contractions. In this case, "they're" is the contraction for "they are," with the apostrophe taking the place of the space between the two words as well as the "a" in "are." Seeing the word used correctly in context will be helpful: "They're smarter than you think, and they're not going to stop until they're sure you are locked up." In each of the three uses of the word in this sentence, you can substitute "they are" in its place, and the sentence still makes sense. If you can't substitute "they are," "they're" is the wrong form for the situation.

The first two forms of the word are both based on the pronoun "they," but the third form, "there" has absolutely nothing to do with "they." Of the three forms, "there" is perhaps the most difficult to define, as some of its uses are largely empty and primarily syntactic. Most obviously, "there" is used to point to a particular place, as in the following example: "I put the keys over there, on the counter." Its other use is somewhat related, but in current usage, it is not used to point to anything specific. In the sentence "There are many ways to write a good essay," "there" is used as a "dummy" word that is required by the syntax of the sentence. There is no specific "there" place to which it refers, and so it becomes merely a placeholder in the sentence.

To figure out which form of the word to use in a given situation, apply the tests suggested here in order, and then use the form that fits. First ask yourself whether someone is in possession of something, then ask whether you can substitute "there are" in place of the word. If neither of these is applicable, "there" is the only option.

Your, You're

Very near the top of the list of common misuses is the pair "your" and "you're," and again, although we are taught the difference between the two from an early age, it seems like using the wrong one at the wrong time is an irresistible temptation few of us are able to resist. The reason for this temptation, as is the case for so many of the words we regularly misuse and confuse, has to do with the sound of the word, and our resultant failure to focus on different spellings for different purposes. There is another homonym for this word pair, "yore," which refers to the idea of a bygone age associated with no specific historical time and place. However, this term is seldom confused with the first two, likely because it is not often used, whereas the other two are very common. This common use is another reason we tend to confuse certain homonyms and not others, for if we use the words on a daily basis, we are more likely to mix them up than words we seldom see.

The word "your" is used to indicate the second person singular and plural possessive forms of the personal pronoun "you." This sounds somewhat complicated, but some example sentences make the point far more clear: "Your handbag is under the bench, and your suitcase is in the closet." Here, we can clearly see that "your" is always and only used to show a person's ownership of a given thing. It can be used to show possession of physical things, as it is in the above sentence, or abstract things, like thoughts or ideas, as in the following sentence: "Your plan looks good to me, but your intentions do not seem noble." Plans and intentions are not concrete things, but "your" is nonetheless used to show who is the source of these abstract entities. If you are writing a sentence which shows no ownership, "your" is not the form you want to use. If you have trouble with applying this word correctly, always ask yourself what is owned by whom in a given sentence. If this question can't be answered, "your" is not the right word.

"You're," on the other hand, has nothing to do with possession, even though it has an apostrophe, which is often an indicator of a possessive form, as in "Billy's baby," or "the dog's bone." In this case, the apostrophe is there as a place-holder for missing letters, which makes "you're" a contraction, similar to "they're" and "we're." The word "you're" is actually a short form for the words "you are," with the apostrophe taking the place of the space, as well as the "a" from "are." Apostrophes are often used for this purpose, and so it is important to remember that this little piece of punctuation is not just used for possession. Here is an example of "you're" used correctly several times in a sentence: "You're never going to get that job because you're too concerned about how much you're going to make, and you're not excited about the work itself." In each of the four uses of the word in this sentence, we can see that "you're" could be substituted by "you are," and the meaning of the sentence would be exactly the same. In fact, this is one of the best tests for differentiating between the two forms of the word; if you can replace it with "you are," you need to use the word "you're." If this replacement does not make sense, the "your" form is the appropriate one to use.

Two, Too, To

Although successive teachers in every year of our schooling try their best to untangle this diabolical knot of confusion, it never fails that university English professors still have to hold a class after the first papers have been marked to once again explain the difference between the three identical sounding words that are not spelled the same. Whenever a word has exact homonyms (words spelled differently but sounding the same), there is a tendency to use them interchangeably, and while this is unnoticeable in speech, in writing it can lead to errors that make teachers cry. Interestingly, non-native speakers are not very likely to make these mistakes once they become fluent writers, probably because they learn the written form of the word at the same time or even before they learn how it is pronounced, unlike native speakers who learn how the word sounds first, and the written forms only later.

It is easiest in this case to deal with the most distinct form of the three words first, that being "two." Because this form is the most distinct of the three, using it incorrectly is also considered to be the worst error, and if you make it in a classroom much beyond third grade you will likely receive ridicule from classmates and teachers alike. Spelled this way, the word refers to the number 2, and nothing else. It is the only one with a "w," and this distinction alone should be enough to cement it in your mind.

The other forms are not so distinct either graphically (as written on the page) nor semantically (with regard to their meanings), and so confusion between these can last much longer, and plague my email inbox to this day. It is easiest to look at the form "too" first, as its meaning is far easier to articulate. Spelled this way, it means "as well," "in addition to," or "an excess or excessive amount." The first two meanings listed here are for the most part interchangeable, and either phrase can be substituted for "too" in the following sentence: "I want pickles, relish, and mustard too!" In this case, the person wants mustard in addition to, and as well as, pickles and relish. The third meaning occurs when "too" is used as a modifier of an adjective, as in the sentence "He was too big." Whenever you want to suggest that a certain quality is there to a greater degree than is desirable, "too" is the word to use. As an easy way to remember the spelling of this word if you have difficulties doing so, just remember that "too" has an additional "o," an extra "o," or maby an overabundance of "o's." In short, if you remember that there are too many "o's" in "too," you should not confuse it with its other forms any longer.

By the process of elimination, we are left with the final form, "to," and this is perhaps also the best way to identify when to use it. When you want to use one of the tree forms of this word in a sentence, but are unsure as to which one you should pick, think first whether the number two is appropriate, and then consider if you are speaking about an abundance, excess, or addition , which would require "too." If it is neither of these things, it must be the simple, short "to." We use this form of the word so often that not many of us have a positive definition of it. It is a preposition which can indicate motion from one place to another, or which can more generally specify the direction of some action, as in giving something to someone. It is also the first part of the infinitive of verbs, as in "to eat" and "to be." However, since these definitions rely so heavily on grammatical concepts and more complex linguistic concepts than the other forms of the word, the process of elimination is a fine way to ensure you are not using "to" in the wrong place.

Common Language Misusages

]It has often been said that native speakers of a language are at a disadvantage when compared to non-native speakers with regard to grammatical precision and correct usage. This seems like the complete opposite of what we might expect, but when we look at the different ways native and non-native speakers learn a language, the strange situation begins to make more sense. Native speakers do not first learn a given language by being taught its rules: that comes later, long after the person has learned to speak proficiently. Children simply absorb the language as it unfolds around them, and so they will adopt the habits and manner of speaking of their parents and peers, learning the correct forms and rules through induction without conscious study or analysis.

As a result, native speakers have a far greater appreciation for subtleties of their native tongue like idiom, abbreviation, contraction, and fluid tones with appropriate transitions and stresses. However, because language is learned by native speakers in the real world and on the fly, they will adopt both the correct and incorrect terms and forms of use that they hear; the person who uses incorrect words therefore cannot really be said to be making a mistake in the truest sense of the word, for they are flawlessly replicating the forms and systems that they have been given. An individual who uses the word "me" in the possessive, as in "I will take me dog to the vet," as opposed to "my," is doing precisely what he or she had learned, not willfully or ignorantly butchering the language.

Non-native speakers, of course, do not learn language the same way. Once we reach our late teen and adult years, we lose out childhood capacity to acquire language naturally and "for free," without significant effort and study. As a result, when we learn a new language, we move deductively, learning the rules first and then forming the language based on them. As a result, it would not even occur to a non-native speaker to substitute "me" for "my," as they would have a solid understanding of the rules surrounding the objective and possessive forms of the personal pronoun. Similarly, the mistakes many of us make between "I" and "me" is simply not a factor for foreign speakers, as they learn the rules for applying them before they ever have a chance to get them wrong.

Note that the terms "incorrect usage" and "poor grammar" presuppose that there is an objective and correct version of the language which invalidates all other forms and variations. However, this is not really the case in any overarching way. As was mentioned above, speakers learn the language that surrounds them, and only convention and the authority of a given group of language users demarcates the "correct" dialect and usage from the "incorrect" versions. In some parts of the world, using "me" for "my" is the norm; only the conventions and rules handed down from authorities like the government, schools, and universities make such usage wrong.

However, despite the relative arbitrariness of the distinctions between proper and improper language use, it is an undeniable fact that one of the last socially sanctioned forms of prejudice rests in our evaluations of how people use language. Using certain phrases and words in ways that are considered incorrect, both in speech and in writing, will undoubtedly lead others (who know and apply the acknowledged linguistic standards) to judge them as being less intelligent, less educated, and perhaps even inferior people. This is not necessarily the case at all, but the fact remains that knowing how to use language properly is vitally important to creating a positive impression, whether that be in the classroom, or in the world at large. Think of this series, then, not merely as an exercise in English, but rather as a guideline to avoiding embarrassment, and to getting the respect you and your ideas deserve.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

This final article in the series on essential figurative language deals with two terms that students find somewhat difficult to grasp, and often impossible to distinguish from each other. Aside from their difficult spellings and non-intuitive pronunciations, the terms are not even separated from each other unanimously by literary and rhetorical professionals, meaning that students will hear subtly different definitions from various teachers and professors. As in most matters regarding school, remember in this case that, since your teacher or professor is marking you, follow their definition in the work you do for them. This may seem somewhat unfair or unpleasant, but in the end, it will serve you best.

For the purposes of this article, I am going to treat synecdoche as a sub-class of metonymy, though keep in mind that there are those who treat them as completely separate entities, and also those who use the two words interchangeably making no distinction between them whatsoever. Most simply defined, metonymy is the use of a word or phrase in place of another word or phrase to which it is closely related. Like many of the other figures we have discussed, we use this device on a daily basis, to the point where many examples of it cease to seem like figurative language at all, although they are undoubtedly impossible to understand if taken literally. One of the most often used examples occurs in the following sentence: "The White House reported a 45% decrease in spending this year, shocking everyone." Although we hear phrases like this all the time in the news, it is obvious that the White House itself, that building where the federal government makes it primary residence, cannot actually report anything. Note, though, that this is not an example of personification, because no one is actually meaning to suggest that the White House itself is actually making any kind of report, nor speaking. Here, we have used "White House" in place of "the president and his staff," because the White House is so closely associated with these individuals. Note also that there is no metaphor in use here: we are not comparing the White House to the president and his staff, but rather using it as a stand-in for those individuals because of the close connection between them.

Synecdoche is a very similar concept, but a more specific one, substituting a part for the whole, or a whole for the part. Again, an example makes this far more clear: "The captain requests that all hands report to his chambers for further instructions immediately." The key word in this case is "hands," and we can see that it is an example of figurative language by imagining what this would mean if taken literally: the captain wants a group of disembodied hands to meet him? This obviously makes no sense, and we know that the word "hands" is used in place of "crew members," appropriate because on a ship the crew are there to give a hand, and to handle whatever situations may arise. An example of using a whole for the part might be as simple as "the fire department is here!" This seems straightforward since it is so common, but literally this passage is suggesting that the entire department is outside, perhaps even including the administrative offices and all of the related equipment. Obviously, the inclusive phrase "fire department" is being used to refer to the presence of some specific members of the fire department who have arrived to put out a blaze.

If one desires to make a clear distinction between these terms, I believe the following division is the most useful. If, as in the first example dealing with the White House above, the term being used is not an actual part of the thing it is replacing (the White House is not a part of the president and his crew), we have metonymy. If, as in the second and third examples, the word being used is a part of, or contains as a part of itself, the term it is replacing, it is synecdoche.

Malapropism

Of all the figurative terms that have been introduced in this series, malapropism is arguably the most amusing, but unfortunately also one of the most infrequently used in everyday life. Unlike most of the terms we have seen so far, this word has distinct French origins, coming from the French term mal - propos, meaning "bad (or incorrect) to propose," leading to the English term "malapropos" meaning "inappropriately." The figurative device as we know it today comes most directly from a character in Richard Sheridan's play The Rivals, where the character Mrs. Malaprop (named for the already existing English term "malapropos") unwittingly uses the device throughout the story.

Malapropism is intentionally deployed primarily in comedy, where it acts like a kind of pun, relying on the similar sounds but different meanings of words. When we hear it in real life, and as far as the characters in literature who use it are concerned, it is always unintentional, which is part of what makes it such an effective comic device. A malapropism is the accidental use of a word or phrase in place of another word or phrase that sounds very similar to it, but which is completely inappropriate to the situation, sometimes completely confusing any meaning, but more often generating a new meaning which is comically far from the original intended one.

Some of the clearest examples of this device occur when people attempt to decode difficult song lyrics, and one classic case of this occurs with a very well known (but frequently misquoted and mis-sung) verse from the legendary Jimi Hendrix: "Excuse me, while I kiss the sky." The meaning of this line is somewhat vague to begin with, but it obviously has something to do with an altered state of being, a sense of expanded consciousness and connection with the infinite through music, drugs, or probably both. However, note how the meaning of the line changes dramatically through an unfortunate but highly comical malapropism attributed to many who attempt to sing along: "Excuse me, while I kiss this guy." The sounds of the lines are almost identical, and the way Hendrix sings them, the words "the sky" are sung so quickly compared to the earlier words in the line that they seem to merge, leading to a sound which, if one didn't know better, could very well be "this guy." Say it to yourself several times quickly, and you will see how easy the mistake is to make. Here, the comedy arises from the almost identical sounding phrases creating totally different meanings, taking the verse from one about a wonderful, liberated experience with the infinite to one which is far more earthly and human.

For a more subtle literary example, consider the following exchange, and pay special attention to the italicized word: "'The vast majority of your tenants are clearly flawed,' commented Robert forcefully. 'Perhaps,' replied George, 'But then I never claimed to be a discriminating landlord.' The malapropism here rests on the word "tenant," and in order to understand the joke you need to know that Robert really means to use the word "tenet," a very common mistake. "Tenet," the word he means to use, means a principle, premise, or point in an argument, and he wants to say that George's argument is not a good one. Instead, by using the word "tenant" which means someone who lives in your building and pays you rent (making you the landlord), he is really saying that George's renters are flawed in some way. Picking up on this, George replies to the literal meaning of Robert's words, rather than the meaning he intends, exposing the error and making the situation more amusing. The best literary malapropism has this character, and though it is not very common in popular culture today, some sitcoms (like Friends re-runs) employ it, as do some comedic feature films.

Hyperbole and Litotes

Hyperbole and Litotes, like many of the terms in this series, are relatively uncommon names for figurative devices that all of us have used and heard countless times. A few common examples of each may make the meaning of each term clear before any discussion is needed. Read the following and try to form a definition of each term before reading on:

Hyperbole:

"He had the strength of ten men."

"She was as big as a house."

"That dog was heavier than a cow!"

Litotes:

"Being tortured with fire must have been somewhat uncomfortable."

"Rap videos with dancers in them are not uncommon."

"There are a few Starbucks in America."

As you have probably gleaned from the examples, hyperbole and litotes are similar devices with opposite effects. Hyperbole is a massive exaggeration, where something is described in a way that is so inflated that it could not be true. No one has the strength of ten men (unless we are talking about superheroes, of course), no person is as large as a house, and no dog can match the mass of a cow. Notice that simile is a very common vehicle for expressing hyperbole, as is metaphor, and there are certain comparative entities that we know will be used to exaggerate a given characteristic of something in comparison. For example, cows are used to indicate and exaggerate weight, Bill Gates, Rockefeller, or Trump to exaggerate wealth, and Einstein to exaggerate intelligence. Note that hyperbole must be used sincerely in order to be considered hyperbole at all. If I call someone Einstein when he is really stupid, this is irony, not hyperbole. If I call my brilliant classmate Einstein, it is obvious that I do not think he is that smart, but it is also obvious that I am using the comparison to highlight his intelligence, rather than to diminish it.

Litotes is almost the opposite of hyperbole; it is massive understatement. With litotes, irony is almost always present, but it does not rest in the falsity of the comparison so much as it does the way it is expressed. In the first litotes example above, it is true that being tortured would not be comfortable. However, there is a definite discrepancy between the act described (fire-torture) and the words used to describe it (somewhat uncomfortable). The descriptive words are not false, but they come nowhere near a full description of the action in question; the torture would not be merely uncomfortable, but rather excruciating. Another frequently employed type of litotes is the denial of something's opposite, as in the second example above. Rap videos with dancers are very, very common, and it might be argued that there are almost no such videos without them. Claiming that they are "not uncommon" is a way of saying that they are somewhat common, when in reality this is massive understatement. Again, it is a true statement, but it doesn't go nearly far enough, and we are left with a witty, humorous effect, reminiscent of stereotypical British humor.

As we can see from the examples and explanations above, these devices work in very different ways. Hyperbole is blatant and obvious, relying on the reader or listener to recognize the exaggeration and appreciate the humorous effect. Litotes, on the other hand, presents its understated comparisons in a much more subdued tone, and it often takes more careful attention from the reader to recognize it. Whereas irony would largely negate the effects of hyperbole, it is an important aspect of litotes, where subtlety and ironic wit are necessary to generate the intended humorous effect.

Allegory

Any time several lower-level concepts are combined to produce a more complex one, confusion will arise; this holds true nowhere more obviously in high school and university English classrooms than when the idea of allegory is introduced. Allegory combines elements of symbol, metaphor, and allusion to create an overarching effect that works over the entire course of a literary text. Allegory provides a sustained and coherent second level of meaning in a text, and without an understanding of this level, the text will often seem far shallower and overly simple.

Just as a symbol is something which stands for itself and something else, an allegory is a story that stands for itself but also another "story," whether that be an actual literary story or a historical event. We can see aspects of allusion here, in that the surface story makes a sustained reference to a story outside itself, and we also see metaphor as one story is laid over the other and the two are brought into comparison through the juxtaposition. When all of these elements work together in a sustained way over the course of a literary work, we have an allegory.

If identifying any of the other aspects of figurative language is sometimes difficult, identifying allegory is a true challenge for the literary novice. In order for an allegory to work, the reader needs to be aware of the prior "story" that is being allegorized. For example, many students are completely unaware that Orwell's Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution. As a result, they read it only as an animal fable, and many wonder why on earth they have been asked to read a children's story in high school or university. Because it is so important for the reader to understand the allegory, authors have several devices at their disposal which make their purposes more apparent, ranging from the blatant to the subtle.

The first way of cluing the reader in to the presence of allegory almost feels like cheating: the author or publisher can simple tell readers somewhere in or on the book that the work is allegorical. This may be a sign that the allegory is weakly presented or completely not obvious, and it is probably the worst way to give readers insight. Another is to give some key characters names that strongly resemble those characters or people in the story being allegorized, as well as giving them corresponding physical and personal traits. If there is a tyrannical rat in my animal fable novel with a little moustache and the name "Adolph Ratler," it will be plain to all familiar with World War II that the rat stands in for Hitler. The appropriate arrangement of events is another, more subtle way to make readers aware of the allegory present in a story, although this requires more work on the part of both the author and reader. First, the author has to know the events he or she is allegorizing very well, and must present the key elements in the right order to trigger awareness in the reader. The reader must be aware of the historical situation being described so that the clues and parallels trigger the situation in his or her mind.

Allegory can be centered on very specific events and circumstances, like a particular battle, or around much larger events, like the progress of a war, revolution, or even the entire reign of a monarch. History supplies the majority of allegorical subjects, with religious and political events being the most widely used. The earlier the allegory, the more likely it is to be based on religious themes; take Dante's Divine Comedy as a prime example. Later works tend to focus on the political, like Orwell's Animal Farm.

Allusion

Having so recently discussed puns in this series, it is appropriate that we turn next to a relatively uncommon word with a very common homonym which causes students endless confusion and professors endless grief. The term allusion sounds precisely like the word illusion, but apart from the striking similarity in sound, these words have nothing in common, and should never, ever be confused in the English classroom, especially on an essay, test, or exam.

In literary circles, an allusion is a textual reference to a specific cultural production or event. Cultural productions refer to any works which human beings create, including art, literature, cinema, philosophy, and myth, while events refer to actual historical figures, circumstances, and happenings. Allusions to other literary works are perhaps the most common and obvious form of allusion in literature, and these allusions efficiently add layers of meaning to a text that could not be conveyed without it.

Allusions range from the highly evident to the remarkably obscure, and scholars have debated using different terms to describe the various degrees of allusive explicitness. On the most evident side of the continuum we have quotation, where an author directly quotes another's work within his or her own, with or without quotation marks. This type of allusion is intentional and obvious to anyone familiar with the work being quoted. On the opposite end of the continuum is the echo, where nothing is directly quoted, but the same mood, style, subject matter, or method of presentation reminds us strongly of a previous work. Echo is often unintentional, and while the author might have read the previous work to which the allusion is being made, this is not necessary; the allusion in this case is determined by the reader, rather than the author. Some argue that allusion properly defined rests somewhere between these two extremes, and that neither of these is actually itself allusion! However, for our purposes it is most useful to see allusion as a broad category containing many subtle shades of difference which all contribute to a basic general effect.

When an allusion appears in a literary work, it operates in a way similar to a metaphor, but on a much more general level. We are reading one work, and therein we are reminded of another. As a result, we have an immediate and automatic comparison to make between the current work and the one it is alluding to. How are these situations similar? How are the works similar as a whole? Is the style of this work reflective of the previous, and if so, why has this been done? The allusion forces us to lay the contents of one work over the contents of another, encouraging us to examine the points of similarity and difference we encounter.

Note that the use of allusion is at times, if you will pardon my weak pun, elusive. Sometimes authors attempt to make their allusions obvious, and sometimes they make them remarkably subtle, but in either case, the effectiveness of the allusion relies on the reader's picking up on the reference made. T.S. Eliot's famous poem The Waste Land uses hundreds if not thousands of allusions, ranging from the blatantly overt to the closely concealed, and almost no reader will be able to pick up on all of them without being shown where they are. The role of the reader and his or her background is paramount in this case, because although the poem can be read and enjoyed without getting many of the references, it takes on greater and greater significance with every allusion you identify. A simple line can turn from being a straightforward and relatively uninteresting phrase to a pivotal moment which displays the strongest theme of the poem. Allusion allows authors to bring to mind the whole host of associations, meanings, and emotions of a previous work by means of a quick line or phrase, making it a remarkably efficient and effective tool. Allusion can lead to losing some readers, but the risk is most often outweighed by the rewards.

Pun

Puns can be found everywhere in modern society, and it is difficult to imagine advertising, sitcoms, and even comedy without them. Turn on the TV for 30 minutes and the odds are that you will have heard many puns even in that short time, likely both in the show being broadcast and the commercials which appear within it. Punning has been described as the lowest form of wit and humor, but it has nonetheless continued to pervade both literary and popular culture for generations.

The definition of pun given in most high school classrooms is "a play on words," and while this is perfectly right, it is so general as to be vague and largely unhelpful. After all, what does the phrase "play on words" mean? To remain somewhat general while introducing a technically more accurate and useful definition, I would define a pun as the intentional confusion or conflation of a word or phrase with another, based on similar sounds, resulting in the attribution of inappropriate and humorous meanings to the word or words in question. This sounds complicated, but an example or two will make it very clear.

One simple example from contemporary advertising is the product name

"Quackers."

Just reading the word, we can quickly see what is going on, and what the product might be; Quackers are crackers shaped like ducks. Here, the company has found a similar sound in the word cracker and the work quack, and combined them to make a new word, Quackers. Puns have to work on two levels, and this word accomplishes that because it combines the sound a duck makes with the word crackers, resulting in a word that expresses both ducks and crackers. Also, since ducks quack, even though it is not a proper English word, we can imagine that they could be referred to as "quackers," that is, things that quack.

Puns often exploit homonyms (two words that sound identical but which carry different meanings and spellings) because the sound similarity (as mentioned in the long definition above) is perfect. For example, we might end a story about a dog being rescued from an abandoned mineshaft by a miner with

"As Fido leapt from the man's arms into the bright open air, everyone cheered; they knew they had all been witnesses to a miner miracle."

The pun here relies on the homonyms miner and minor, the first referring to the person who works in a mine, the second to something small or of relatively little importance. Both of these meanings are appropriate here, since the rescue was completed by a miner in a mine, and since the rescue of a dog (especially considering how much more important the rescue of people in a mine would be) is a relatively minor accomplishment. This pun becomes even more effective because it employs a commonly used phrase, "minor miracle." This phrase is used to describe an outcome which, while not truly miraculous or impossible, is still positive and unlikely. The rescue is a minor miracle in the usual sense, as well as a miracle performed by miners, so the pun works to bring both levels of meaning together. Note that in cases like these, the way the word is spelled is important. If the word had been spelled "minor" like it usually is in the phrase "minor miracle," the pun would not have been so obvious, since we expect this kind of phrase. By changing its spelling in context with the word miracle, however, the pun stands out, and causes us to consider both meanings.

Symbolism and Symbols

The importance and wonder of symbolism today has nowhere been better conveyed than in the enormous popularity of the recent novel (and its film adaptation) The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. Many students find symbolism one of the most difficult aspects of literature to comprehend, but an understanding of this pervasive device is perhaps the first threshold separating the novice from the more experienced reader. Most simply defined, a symbol is something which is presented both as itself, and as a representation of something, or some things, else. The emphasis is added here because many students forget the importance of the thing itself to the literary work; it is important to understand what a symbol is referring to, but it is vital to remember that the thing itself should not be forgotten when attempting to find its secondary meaning.

There are many kinds of symbols which can be categorized in many different ways, but I find it most useful to consider them according to two categories: general symbols, and contextual symbols. These categories are not mutually exclusive since general symbols are often used in specific contexts to present different shades of meaning, but considering them in this way allows us to see the different ways symbols can be generated, and generative of different meanings.

A general symbol relies primarily on its linguistic and social history for its secondary meanings.

These symbols are in the social consciousness, and will be known and understood by most mature individuals and even young children in some cases. A very well known example is the heart. When I draw this on a greeting card, it immediately suggests love, and I can even use this symbol as a stand-in for the word love since it is so well known. Because it is so well known, and well worn, this symbol is not common in literature, but it does display in a very obvious manner what a symbol is.

A more subtle example of a general symbol in use in literature might be a passage in a novel or a line in a poem that shows a dove flying overhead. The dove has been widely known as a symbol for peace throughout history, and so its inclusion in a literary work will immediately suggest peace. Note that the context in which the dove appears is not vitally important to our recognition of it as a specific symbol. It has a long social history as a symbol of peace, and so whenever we see it, it carries these associations.

Contextual symbols on the other hand are not reliant on social conventions, but rather on the context in which they occur.

Imagine for a moment a story which features a treasure hunt at sea, where the gold is rumored to be contained within a giant oyster. Throughout the story, we see images and engravings of oysters popping up all over the place. The heroes of the story are at one point trapped inside a huge building complex which is shaped like an oyster. Perhaps there is also a secret society with an oyster as its logo. In this case, the oyster begins to stand for secrecy, darkness, and the protection of important things. There are certain characteristics of the oyster that make this somewhat appropriate, like its hard shell, dark interior, the difficulty in opening it, and its famed ability to occasionally produce and conceal pearls. So, even though the oyster is not generally considered a symbol of these things in everyday language and society, the context in which it resides makes it a symbol throughout the story in which it appears.