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Stylistic Devices: Parallelism, Anaphora, Tricolon

1 min
C2
CEFR C2·other

Formula

Parallelism
repeat the same grammatical structure
("To err is human, to forgive divine.")
Anaphora
("We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight…")
Tricolon
three parallel parts
("Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.")

Examples

Positive
I came, I saw, I conquered.
Negative
No food, no sleep, no rest — that was their reality.
Question
Was it ignorance, was it indifference, was it spite?

Usage

  • •Add rhythm, emphasis, and memorability to speech and writing
  • •Common in speeches, advertising, slogans, and literary writing
  • •Make ideas more persuasive and easier to remember

More Examples

  • Government of the people, by the people, for the people.

    Parallel preposition + noun (Lincoln) — also a tricolon

  • Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

    Chiasmus / reversed parallelism

  • It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

    Anaphora ("it was…") with antithesis

  • Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.)

    Classical tricolon with rhythmic build-up

  • Yes we can. Yes we can. Yes we can.

    Anaphora used in oratory for emphasis

Common Mistakes

  • ✗Broken parallelism: ❌ "She likes to swim, hiking, and to read" → ✓ "She likes to swim, to hike, and to read" (all infinitives).
  • ✗Overusing rhetorical devices in business/academic writing — can feel forced or theatrical.

Tips

  • ✓Three is a magic number — tricolons feel naturally satisfying ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness").
  • ✓Match grammatical form across parallel items: all -ing forms, all infinitives, or all noun phrases — never mix.

Advanced Notes

Rhetorical devices operate on the listener's ear and memory as much as on meaning. Tricolons exploit the cognitive "rule of three" — two items feel incomplete, four feel exhausting, three feel satisfying and conclusive. Anaphora (repeated opening) creates building momentum; epistrophe (repeated ending) is its less-known mirror. Chiasmus (AB-BA reversal) produces the most memorable single-line formulations in the language. At C2 level, active recognition matters as much as production: exam tasks often ask learners to identify and comment on these devices in literary or political texts. Broken parallelism (mixing grammatical forms across a list) is among the most common writing errors at any level.

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Compare With

Cleft Sentences(C2)