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In English essay first meant "a trial" or "an attempt", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing. Subsequently, essay has been
Ben Jonson's Execration Upon Vulcan, one of the first recorded forms of the plain style in English literature. The plain style in literature, otherwise referred to as the 'low style', is the most common form of communication in the English language. It is a form of rhetoric which expresses a message very clearly to convey a direct meaning. The ...
In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. [1] As Bryan Ray notes, however, style is a broader concern, one that can describe "readers' relationships with, texts, the grammatical choices writers make, the importance of adhering to norms in certain contexts and deviating from them in others, the ...
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types, but particularly literary texts, and spoken language with regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of language used by different individuals in different situations and settings.
The easiest stylistic device to identify is a simile, signaled by the use of the words "like" or "as".A simile is a comparison used to attract the reader's attention and describe something in descriptive terms.
An idiom is an expression that has a figurative meaning often related, but different from the literal meaning of the phrase. Example: You should keep your eye out for him. A pun is an expression intended for a humorous or rhetorical effect by exploiting different meanings of words. Example: I wondered why the ball was getting bigger. Then it ...
A precising definition is intended to make a vague word more precise so that the word's meaning is not left to the interpretation of the reader or listener. Here is an example: From a class syllabus: "Class participation" means attending class, listening attentively, answering and asking questions, and participating in class discussions.