Improving Writing – Technical Terms
We expect pupils to be able to use some terminology when writing about texts, fiction and non-fiction, increasingly so as they move through the key stages. To help you support their learning this list glosses some of the key terms we use; the ones underlined are those that are most frequently used:
Allegory: meaning is represented symbolically
Alliteration: the repetition of (often) initial letters in words next to or near each other
Ambiguity: open to interpretation of its meaning
Antithesis: counterargument
Colloquialisms: popular words and phrases used in everyday conversation
Couplets: pairs of lines that rhyme
Dialect: language with its own distinctive accent, grammar and vocabulary
Hyperbole: exaggeration
Imagery: descriptive language used to create a particular picture, feeling or mood in the reader’s imagination
Internal rhyme: rhyming words within a line/sentence
Juxtaposition: literally ‘position next to’. Two ideas (often contrasting) are placed together to emphasise difference
Metaphor: an image that describes something as though it were something else
Metre/rhythm: regularity of beat or rhythm in a poem sometimes established by stressing the same number of syllables in each line
Mood: the atmosphere and feelings that the writing evokes
Narrator/speaker: not always voicing opinions of writer – may be given specific persona
Onomatopoeia: sound of words echo what it describes or means
Oxymoron: a phrase in which two seemingly contradictory terms are placed together
Paradox: phrase/statement that seems self-contradictory/impossible
Pathetic fallacy: when natural forces/objects mirror the mood, atmosphere and emotions of the text or characters
Personification: an inanimate object, animal or abstract idea is given human qualities
Pun: play on words
Simile: the direct comparison of one thing with another using ‘like’ or ‘as’
Sonnet: poem of 14 lines
Stanza: group of lines
Tautology: Two phrases/words in succession that have the same meaning: [They all agreed][unanimously]
Tone: the attitude of the poem, e.g. serious, humorous, mischievous or sarcastic
Voice: perspective: helps suggest mood, attitude and purpose