Syntactical Stylistic Divices

Inversion/Change of Word Order

Inversion/Change of Word Order aims at making one of the members of the sentence more conspicuous, more important, more emphatic.

'Talent Mr.Micawber has; capital Mr.Micawber has not.'

Came frightful days of snow and rain.

Detached Construction

Detached Construction is a secondary part of a sentence, placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to. The detached part, being torn away from its referent, assumes a greater degree of significance.

Steyne rose up, grinding his teeth, pale, and with fury in his eyes.

This stylistic device is akin to inversion, detached construction produces a much stronger effect.

'I want to go', he said, miserable.'

A variant of detached construction is parenthesis. Parenthesis is a qualifying, explanatory or appositive word, phrase, sentence, etc. which interrupts a syntactic construction, giving an utterance an additional meaning or emotional colouring. It is indicated in writing by commas, brackets or dashes.

Carl, a great singer, was not a good dancer.

Parallel Construction

Parallel Construction may be encountered not so much in the sentence as in the macro-structures. The necessary condition in parallel construction is identical, or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession:

'There were real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and real china cups to drink tea out of, and plates of the same to hold the cakes and toast in.'

Parallel Construction is most frequently used in enumeration, antithesis and climax, thus consolidating the general effect achieved by these stylistic devices.

In the following example parallelism backs up repetition, alliteration, and antithesis, making the whole sentence almost epigrammatic: