Writing with Clarity and Style: A Guide to Rhetorical Devices for Contemporary Writers / Edition 2

by Robert A. Harris

Overview

Writing with Clarity and Style, 2^nd 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138560093
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/06/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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