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Hyperbole - that's an understatement!
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Hyperbole - that's an understatement! |
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
Hyperbole, the equivalent of an understatement, deliberately exaggerates conditions for emphasis or effect. In formal writing the hyperbole must be clearly intended as an exaggeration, and should be carefully restricted. That is, do not exaggerate everything, but treat hyperbole like an exclamation point, to be used only once a year. It can be quite effective as a table-thumping attention getter, introductory to your essay or some section thereof: * There are a thousand reasons why more research is needed on solar energy. Or it can make a single point with enthusiasm: * I said "rare," not "raw." I've seen cows hurt worse than this get up and get well. Or you can exaggerate one thing to show how really different it is from something supposedly similar to which it is being compared: * This stuff is used motor oil compared to the coffee you make, my love. Hyperbole is the most overused and overdone rhetorical figure in the whole world (and that is no hyperbole); we are a society of excess and exaggeration. Nevertheless, hyperbole can have a useful place in your writing as long as you handle it like dynamite, and do not blow up everything you can find. [This message has been edited by Poet deVine (edited 02-26-2000).] |
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Brad Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705Jejudo, South Korea |
Ahhh, a woman after my own heart. I do use hyperbole on occasion but more for a fabulistic effect. In other words, I use it as if it were real. Hyperbole leads to inflation which leads to more hyperbole which leads to more inflation . . . . But then again I think the Father's Ghost in Hamlet is over the line.  I am, however, a strong advocate of understatement in poetic writing. My turn to post something here? Brad |
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
Brad, be my guest..Christopher is out of town and we can use his workshop for our own purposes....  |
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Nan
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-20
Posts 21191Cape Cod Massachusetts USA |
I've told you guys a thousand and one times not to be doing this stuff behind Christopher's back!!! |
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