Rhetorical devices are as useful in writing as they are in life. Also known as persuasive devices, stylistic devices, or simply rhetoric, rhetorical devices are techniques or language used to convey a point or convince an audience. And they’re used by everyone — politicians, businesspeople, and even, you guessed it, your favorite novelists.
You may already know some of them: similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia. Others, maybe not (bdelygmia, we’re talking to you). But at the end of the day, you’ve probably run into all of these devices some time or another. Perhaps, you’ve even used them yourself. And if you haven’t, don’t let their elaborate Greek names fool you — they’re pretty easy to implement, too. But before you dive in, let’s identify the different categories of rhetorical devices out there.
Although there exists plenty of overlap between rhetorical and literary devices, there’s one significant difference between the two. While the latter are employed to express ideas with artistic depth, rhetoric is designed to appeal to one’s sensibilities in four specific ways:
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