- dramatic irony: occurs when the audience or the reader knows something important that the character does not know
- emotional appeal: appeals to one's feelings
- ethical appeal: appeals to one's sense of right and wrong
- exaggeration: to enlarge, increase, or represent something beyond normal bounds so that it becomes ridiculous
- hyperbole: wildly extravagant exaggeration; overstatement
- incongruity: to present things that are out of place or are absurd in relation to surroundings
- logical appeal: appeals to one's sense of reason
- parody: to imitate the techniques and/or style of some person, place, or thing
- persuasion: convincing someone to do or believe something; winning them over to a desired belief or action
- reversal: to present in the opposite of normal order
- sarcasm: a kind of cutting irony in which praise is used tauntingly to indicate opposite in meaning
- satire: a type of writing that ridicules human weakness, vice, or folly in order to bring about social reform
- situational irony: what actually happens is opposite of what is expected or appropriate
- understatement: opposite of exaggeration; a statement that expresses a fact too weakly or less emphatically than it should
- verbal irony: when the speaker or writer says one thing but means something very different--often opposite of what is said