Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Literary Devices



If you would like to nominate Incidental Comics as a "Best Webcomic of 2011," you can go here to voice your support. No pressure!

Thanks to all my high school English teachers for providing the deeply ingrained knowledge behind this comic. And a very special thanks to my proofreaders at the Kansas City Star, who put up with my three consecutive misspellings of "Onomatopoeia."

And finally: English teachers and students, past and current - you can get a poster of this comic for your classroom or reading nook here.

17 comments:

  1. Haha, poor cat is up to be personified. Lovely post!

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  2. Technically, alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. So your wonderous machine is actually an Assonance Alarm.

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  3. ssharp: From my understanding, alliteration is just the repetition of sounds at the beginning of words. Assonance is repetition of vowel sounds and consonance is repetition of consonant sounds in any part of the word. So maybe we're both right?

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  4. I nominated you. If my politics change from signing up with WaPo, I'll let you know.

    KWDave

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  5. To Grant and ssharp: assonance and consonance are two complementing components of alliteration. So yes, both right. (Or at least according to my senior year high school teacher)

    Wonderfully and thoughtfully created. You have my vote

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  6. Dude, I wish these were on a t-shirt! I could buy… MAybe a poster will do for now

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  7. what, this stuff is good. like to good to be on a blog good. not like my retarded scribblings. I'm defo a fan

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  8. And the Rhyme Twister, helpful to all poets, which mangles the pronunciation of a word until it rhymes (sort of) with another word.

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  9. Thanks, everyone.
    Ralph: I am guilty of the Rhyme Twister.

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  10. In its full technicality, alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds (or the absence of a consonant sound) on the stressed syllable (not necessarily the first syllable) of a word. Spelling has nothing to do with it. Thus advance alliterates on V, and alert, alliteration, alarm on L. In Pope's line apt alliteration's artful aid, the words apt, art, aid all begin with different vowel sounds, but they alliterate anyway because they don't begin with a consonant. As Tolkien pointed out, old English art would alliterate just as well.

    Personally, I like the onomatopoeia engine best. And yes, it's hard to spell; it's even hard to copy.

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  11. How to kill time when you at free time? Internet access?Use Internet to play a game? So you must know WOW Gold or RS Gold , very good game, leisure

    when can play.

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  12. I'm rebloging, if you don't mind. I instantly liked your comics.

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  13. ssharp: Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant sound either in the first syllable of each word in a phrase or in metrically stressed syllables of a phrase. The "L" consonant sound is repeated at the beginning of three of the four words in the phrase "Advance-Alert Alliteration Alarm," and each such occurrence is the beginning of a metrically stressed syllable, so alliteration is the correct term. Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound at any position in a phrase, so assonance applies to the "A" sounds in the phrase. So there is assonance in the phrase, but there is also alliteration.

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  14. I've just discovered your blog (bit late for voting it as the best blog in 2011, I guess) but can't quit going through it. Simply great, amazing. Congratulations, I will surely follow your work from now on :)

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  15. I taught my middle school students to remember the spelling of onomatopoeia this way: think "tomato" and "poe", put them together...take away the "t", replace with "on", finally add "ia" to the end. May seem like a lot of steps, but it seemed to have worked. They could all spell it.

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