The three classical families, the workhorse figures in each, and where “Can You Make It Sound Like Me?” uses them.
★ present in the essay
◆ a measured Zell trait across the 2001–2026 corpus
| Figure | What it does | Classic example | In the essay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parallelism ★ | Matched grammatical structures | “of the people, by the people, for the people” | “at the wrong reason… at the wrong end” |
| Tricolon ★◆ | The three-part list; power of threes | “I came, I saw, I conquered” | “shared phrasings, shared structures, shared conclusions” |
| Anaphora ★ | Repeated openings across clauses | “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight…” | “To the writer… To the accused… To the reader…” |
| Epistrophe | Repeated endings across clauses | “…of the people, by the people, for the people” (final word) | — |
| Chiasmus / antimetabole ★ | ABBA mirror structure | “Ask not what your country can do for you…” | “the machine sounds too much like us / we sound too much like the machine” |
| Anadiplosis ★◆ | Last word becomes next first word | “Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate” | “they find the next one, and the next one is already visible” |
| Asyndeton ★ | Conjunctions dropped for speed | “I came, I saw, I conquered” | “Too smooth, too balanced, too much like the machine” |
| Polysyndeton | Conjunctions multiplied for weight | “and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew” | — |
| Antithesis ★◆ | Balanced opposites in one frame | “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” | “There was no other way… / There is now.” |
| Figure | What it does | Classic example | In the essay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metaphor ★◆ | One thing spoken as another | “All the world’s a stage” | style as flavoring; voice as fingerprint |
| Extended analogy ★◆ | A metaphor sustained and mapped | Plato’s cave | the coffee — caffeine, pour, milk, the broken rule |
| Simile | Explicit comparison with like/as | “My love is like a red, red rose” | “An article, like a cup of coffee…” |
| Metonymy | Associated thing stands in | “The White House said…” | “the desk” for editorial judgment |
| Synecdoche ★ | Part stands for whole | “All hands on deck” | the three mouths for their speakers |
| Personification ★◆ | Abstractions given agency | “Death, be not proud” | “the objection arrives”; “markets do not mourn” |
| Hyperbole | Deliberate overstatement | “I’ve told you a million times” | — |
| Litotes | Affirming by negating the opposite | “not unimpressive” | — |
| Irony ★ | Meaning against the surface | — | the AI-disclosed essay about AI suspicion; the breakfast sentence |
| Figure | What it does | Classic example | In the essay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prolepsis / procatalepsis ★◆ | Raise the reader’s objection first | “Some will say… but” | “The objection arrives on schedule: style is not packaging” |
| Concessio ★◆ | Grant the objection real force, then turn | “True enough — and yet” | “Correct, first, empirically… Correct, second, cognitively… and wrong about what follows” |
| Hypophora ★ | Ask your own question, answer it | “What is our aim? Victory.” | the coda: the title’s question, answered three times |
| Rhetorical question (erotema) | Question expecting no answer | “Shall I compare thee…?” | — (the essay answers its questions) |
| Sententia ★◆ | The compressed closing maxim | “The rest is silence” | “compulsory.” “choosing.” “every milligram of it” |
| Paralipsis | Mention by declaring you won’t mention | “I won’t even discuss his record” | — |
| Aporia | Performed doubt or puzzlement | “I am at a loss where to begin” | — |
| Apostrophe | Address the absent or abstract directly | “O Death, where is thy sting?” | — |
| Epizeuxis ★ | Immediate repetition for emphasis | “Never, never, never give up” | “yes. Simply yes.” |
| Style | Purpose | Register | The essay’s use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain (genus humile) | To teach | Clear, unadorned | the evidence passages, the statistics |
| Middle (genus medium) | To please | Balanced, figured | the coffee movement |
| Grand (genus grande) | To move | Elevated, climactic | the coda and closing sententiae |
Silva Rhetoricae (rhetoric.byu.edu) — free, ~400 figures · Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms — the scholarly desk reference · Farnsworth, Classical English Rhetoric — the “which ones matter” book · Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence — the delightful gateway · Fahnestock, Rhetorical Figures in Science — figures as compressed argument forms
Census note. Rhetorica ad Herennium (~80s BC) named ~65 figures; Peacham’s Garden of Eloquence (1577) ~200; Lanham’s Handlist ~1,000 entries (with Greek/Latin duplicates). Genuinely distinct devices: a few hundred. Doing most of the work in real prose: the ~30 above.