When you are a writer, figures of speech plays a huge part in the style of your writing. You need to know various types of figures of speech, even if you can’t remember the name, in order to help you craft your words in an appealing way.

A figure of speech, sometimes termed a rhetoric, or locution, is a word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language. Figures of speech are often used and crafted for emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use.

Figures of speech have been divided into two main categories: schemes and tropes.

Schemes (from the Greek schēma, form or shape) are figures of speech in which there is a deviation from the ordinary or expected pattern of words. Familiar types of schemes include:

• alliteration: A series of words that begin with the same letter or sound alike

• anticlimax: the arrangement of words in order of decreasing importance

• classification (literature & grammar): linking a proper noun and a common noun with an article

• homographs: Words that are identical in spelling but different in origin and meaning

• homonyms: Words that are identical with each other in pronunciation and spelling, but differing in origin and meaning.

• homophones:Words that are identical with each other in pronunciation but differing in origin and meaning.

• internal rhyme : Using two or more rhyming words in the same sentence

• onomatopoeia: A word imitating a real sound (e.g. tick-tock or boom)

• parenthesis: Insertion of a clause or sentence in a place where it interrupts the natural flow of the sentence

• pun: When a word or phrase is used in two different senses

Tropes (from the Greek tropein, to turn) involve changing or modifying the general meaning of a term. Familiar types of tropes include:

• allegory: An extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject

• alliteration: The repetition of the first consonant sound in a phrase.

• double negative: grammar construction that can be used as an expression and it is the repetition of negative words

• hyperbole: Use of exaggerated terms for emphasis

• innuendo: Having a hidden meaning in a sentence that makes sense whether it is detected or not

• metaphor: A comparison between two things

• oxymoron: Using two terms together, that normally contradict each other

• paradox: Use of apparently contradictory ideas to point out some underlying truth

• satire: The use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. A literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule. A literary genre comprising such compositions.

• simile: A comparison between two things using like or as

Until you become familiar with some of these terms, you may want to use the old index card trick. Write the figure of speech on one side and the definition with and example on the other side. Whatever you do, become familiar with various figures of speech.