Style Point: Figures of speech

Thinking of good style as decorative or flowery stands in contrast to current schools of thought that encourage a plain, concise style. This book encourages a plain, straightforward style, a style suitable to most academic and professional settings.

Even cultivating a plain style, however, does not mean ignoring figurative language. Those who study metaphor or other figurative language note that all language is deeply metaphorical. Figurative language reflects the natural ways that people think and use language.

Metaphors and similes are just two of many figures of speech. You have probably heard of others.

Personification: The attribution of human or animate qualities to inanimate objects.

The fingers of the lake reached for miles back into the surrounding hills.

Onomatopoeia: The use of words that sound like their meaning.

As barns have disappeared from our landscape, so has the lonely hoot of the barn owl.

Hyperbole: Excessive exaggeration.

A momentary lapse of judgment condemned me to a life of wretched misery.

Each of these is an example of a trope, a play on the meaning of words.

The other main sort of figure of speech is called a scheme. Whereas a trope plays with the meaning of words, a scheme plays with the order of words. Here are several examples of tropes.

Zeugma: The yoking of two contrasting ideas in one structure.

He raised his glass and her hopes.

Anastrophe: Inverting of the normal word order.

Silently and stealthily came the invading force.

Chiasmus: Repetition of a phrase in inverted order.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. —Samuel Johnson, Rasselas