| A | B |
|---|
| Prose | The ordinary of form of written language without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse |
| Audience | The person(s) reached by a piece of writing. |
| Asyndeton | The practice of omitting conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses. In a list, it gives a more extemporaneous effect and suggests the list may be incomplete. For example, "He was brave, fearless, afraid of nothing." |
| Deductive | The reasoning process by which a conclusion is drawn from set of premises and contains no more facts than these premises |
| Assonance | The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually in successive or proximate words. |
| Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds or any vowel sounds within a formal grouping, such as a poetic line or stanza, or in close proximity in prose |
| Consonance | The repetition of two or more consonants with a change in the intervening vowels, such as pitter-patter, splish-splash, and click-clack. |
| Invective | The use of angry and insulting language in satirical writing |
| Point of view | The view the reader gets of the action and characters in a story |
| Persona | The voice or figure of the author who tells and structures the story and who may or may not share of the values of the actual author. |
| Syntax | The way words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. It is sentence structure and how it influences the way a reader perceives a piece of writing. |
| Canon (canonical)Ñ | The works of an author that have been accepted as authentic. |
| Foreshadow | To hint at or present things to come in a story or play |
| Begging the question | To sidestep or evade the real problem. |
| Personification | Treating an abstraction or nonhuman object as if it were a person by giving it human qualities. |
| Anachronism | Use of historically inaccurate details in a text; for example, depicting a 19th-century character using a computer. Some authors employ anachronisms for humorous effect, and some genres, such as science fiction or fantasy, make extensive use of anachronism |
| Ambiguity | ÑUse of language in which multiple meanings are possible. Ambiguity can be unintentional through insufficient focus on the part of the writer; in good writing, ambiguity is frequently intentional in the form of multiple connotative meanings, or situations in which either the connotative or the denotative meaning can be valid in a reading. |
| Connotation | What is implied by a word. For example, the words sweet, gay, and awesome have connotations that are quite different from their actual definitions. |
| Transition words | Words and devices that bring unity and coherence to a piece of writing. Examples: however, in addition, and on the other hand. |
