Litotes, chiasmus, enjambment--three literary devices taught to my high school students

Litotes is a figure of speech in which a negative is used to express an affirmative. It is a common form of understatement.

EXAMPLES:

You won’t be sorry.

This food is not bad.

Your haircut is not horrible.

Chiasmus is another literary device. It is found in any statement with repeating words in a criss-cross sequence.

EXAMPLES:

All for one, and one for all.

One should eat to live, not live to eat.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair. THIS IS FROM MACBETH.

Enjambment, In poetry, means a thought from one poetic line spills over to the next line. This is in contrast to any line in poetry having only a self-contained thought.

EXAMPLE:

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Litotes, chiasmus, enjambment--three literary devices taught to my high school students