2nd Edition

Writing with Clarity and Style A Guide to Rhetorical Devices for Contemporary Writers

By Robert A. Harris Copyright 2018
    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    Writing with Clarity and Style, 2nd Edition, will help you to improve your writing dramatically. The book shows you how to use dozens of classical rhetorical devices to bring power, clarity, and effectiveness to your writing. You will also learn about writing styles, authorial personas, and sentence syntax as tools to make your writing interesting and persuasive. If you want to improve the appeal and persuasion of your speeches, this is also the book for you.

    From strategic techniques for keeping your readers engaged as you change focus, down to the choice of just the right words and phrases for maximum impact, this book will help you develop a flexible, adaptable style for all the audiences you need to address.

    Each chapter now includes these sections:

    • Style Check, discussing many elements of style, including some enhanced and revised sections
    • Define Your Terms, asking students to use their own words and examples in their definitions.
    • It’s in the Cloud, directing students to the Web to locate and respond to various rhetorically focused items, including biographies and speeches.
    • Salt and Pepper, spicing up the study of rhetoric by stretching students’ thinking about how their writing can be improved, sometimes by attending to details such as punctuation, and sometimes by exploring the use of unusual techniques such as stylistic fragments.
    • Review Questions, providing an end-of-chapter quiz to help cement the chapter ideas in long-term memory.
    • Questions for Thought and Discussion, a set of questions designed for either in-class discussion or personal response.

    New to the Second Edition

    • Additional examples of each device, including from world personalities and the captains of industry
    • More and longer exercises, with a range of difficulty
    • Advice from classical rhetoricians including Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Cicero, and Quintilian.

    Introduction

    Index of Tables

    Chapter 1: Balance

    Parallelism

    Chiasmus

    Antithesis

    Chapter 2: Emphasis I

    Climax

    Asyndeton

    Polysyndeton

    Sentential Adverb

    Chapter 3: Emphasis II

    Irony

    Understatement

    Litotes

    Hyperbole

    Chapter 4: Transition

    Metabasis

    Procatalepsis

    Hypophora

    Chapter 5: Clarity

    Distinctio

    Exemplum

    Amplification

    Metanoia

    Chapter 6: Syntax I

    Zeugma

    Diazeugma

    Prozeugma

    Mesozeugma

    Hypozeugma

    Syllepsis

    Chapter 7: Syntax II

    Hyperbaton

    Anastrophe

    Appositive

    Parenthesis

    Chapter 8: Figurative Language I

    Simile

    Analogy

    Metaphor

    Catachresis

    Chapter 9: Figurative Language II

    Metonymy

    Synecdoche

    Personification

    Chapter 10: Figurative Language III

    Allusion

    Eponym

    Apostrophe

    Transferred Epithet

    Chapter 11: Restatement I

    Anaphora

    Epistrophe

    Simploce

    Chapter 12: Restatement II

    Anadiplosis

    Conduplicatio

    Epanalepsis

    Chapter 13: Restatement III

    Diacope

    Epizeuxis

    Antimetabole

    Scesis Onomaton

    Chapter 14: Sound

    Alliteration

    Onomatopoeia

    Assonance

    Consonance

    Chapter 15: Drama

    Rhetorical Question

    Aporia

    Apophasis

    Anacoluthon

    Chapter 16: Word Play

    Oxymoron

    Pun

    Anthimeria

    Appendix A: Blog Posting

    Appendix B: Business Email

    Appendix C: Counsellor’s Report About a Client

    Appendix D: Graduate School Application Essay

    Appendix E: Short Story

    Appendix F: Winston Churchill—A Speaker’s Rhetoric

    Index

    Biography

    Robert A. Harris (PhD, University of California, Riverside) taught English at college and university level for more than 25 years. He has also worked in the area of instructional design. Dr. Harris’ other books include Using Sources Effectively: Strengthening Your Writing and Avoiding Plagiarism (now in its fifth edition), and The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism.