A device used in poetry where a sentence continues beyond the end of the line or verse. This technique is often used to maintain a sense of continuation from one stanza to another.
Enjambment
The humorous or sarcastic use of words or ideas, implying the opposite of what they mean.
Irony
A word that sounds like the noise it is describing: 'splash', 'bang', 'pop', 'hiss'.
Onomatopoeia
The use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.
Symbolism
The repetition of a word or phrase to achieve a particular effect.
Repetition
The writer's tone or voice or atmosphere or feeling that pervades the text, such as sadness, gloom, celebration, joy, anxiety, dissatisfaction, regret or anger.
Tone
The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect.
Anaphora
A phrase which establishes similarity between two things to emphasise the point being made. This usually involves the words 'like' or 'as'
Simile
Attributing a human quality to a thing or idea: the moon calls me to her darkened world.
Personification
The way that words sound the same at the end of lines in poetry. Poems often have a fixed rhyme-scheme (for example, sonnets have 14 lines with fixed rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG).
Rhyme
Exaggerating something for literary purposes which is not meant to be taken literally; we gorged on the banquet of beans on toast.
Hyperbole
Where two words normally not associated are brought together: 'cold heat' 'bitter sweet'.
Oxymoron
Contrast is a rhetorical device through which writers identify differences between two subjects, places, persons, things or ideas. Simply, it is a type of opposition between two objects highlighted to emphasize their differences.
Contrast
A repetitive beat or metre within a poem.
Rhythm
The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line.
Alliteration
The same vowel sound is repeated but the consonants are different; he passed her a sharp, dark glance, shot a cool, foolish look across the room.
Assonance
