Hyperbole

Hi Jihad!

How are you? I hope you had a good weekend! We had a longer weekend than usual because today was a national holiday. Yesterday and today we finally got some nice weather!

I have spent some time re-reading your ‘technology’ post and have decided to talk about two things I noticed in your writing. The first is a grammar point that is probably revision for you: verb + (to) verb/verb (ing). The second is a matter of style which you are already using effectively: hyperbole.

OK, here are two sentences from your post:

She spent 2 days to gather information and 5 long hours typing the report.

…they know that I can't afford discarding them.

The verbs in bold are followed by (an)other verb(s) in italics, and when this is the case, we often have to decide whether the second verb should be to verb or verb-ing. There are a several good pages of information on this grammar point on the BBC LE site, for example:

start doing and start to do something, stop doing and stop to do something

verb + verb-ing

Looking at the information on these pages, you can probably see that your sentences would be more usually written as:

She spent 2 days gathering information and 5 long hours typing the report.

…they know that I can't afford to discard them.

Now, my second point is on a matter of style which I think you already use very effectively, so I just want to point it out to the readers of your post and give a few more examples. Look at these sentences from your writing:

…some of these gadgets can let you down and ruin your life

…these devices commit these crimes against me in cold blood

Well, what my computer and mobile do, for example, is very opposite to a friend action [here you could replace the phrase in bold with: more like the behaviour of an archenemy than the behaviour of a friend.]

The device you are using here is called hyperbole and is occurs in both written and spoken English. Hyperbole is when you describe something in order to make it sound much smaller, bigger, worse, better etc. than it actually is. You are using it very effectively in your post to show the reader how strongly you feel about the negative effects of technology! Other examples of hyperbole are:

I could eat a horse = I am very hungry

My bag weighs a ton = my bag is very heavy

It took forever to get home = it took a very long time to get home

Hyperbole is used to create strong effects in literary writing. Here is a famous example of hyperbole from the poem To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)

An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze

You can hear the poem here:

To His Coy Mistress

OK, that’s it for today. See you again later in the week!

Rachel

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Comments on the comments:

Sreenadh (from Hyderabad, India) – my first teaching job was at a girls school in Shimla. I loved the scenery but not the monkeys. I once had a big fight over my handbag right in front of the classroom where was just about to start a lesson with the youngest pupils in the school. I won, but not after I had used my rudest English on the monkey who wanted my handbag, to the shock and horror of the little girls…..

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