Personification

Personification is the act of giving animals, inanimate objects, and ideas human form, personality, or emotion.


Though you would not want to employ personification too much in an essay (just as you also have to be careful about the frequency of your similes and metaphors—too many can make your writing tedious or pretentious), one or two uses of personification can make your writing more interesting and rhetorically effective.

Examples

  • With funding tight in many school systems across the country, art programs are being pick-pocketed by science and math programs.
  • The past will always come knocking on the politician’s door.