THE MAGIC ART

Expert Creative Pens Have This One Guilty Secret

And it’s astonishing how little we notice

Pexels

It worked.

And I bet you didn’t give it a second thought.

My title uses two little-known figures of speech and it isn’t until you examine that sentence closely that you realise how odd this is.

It’s a subtle, yet powerful tool known as the transferred epithet. It’s one of those sneaky literary devices that improves our writing without anyone noticing.

Giphy

Transferred Epithets

A transferred epithet is when an adjective is applied to the wrong noun.

In my title, Expert Creative Pens Have This One Guilty Secret, it’s not the pen that is creative, it’s the expert writer. And it’s the person with a secret who feels guilty, not the secret itself — that would be impossible.

We use transferred epithets in everyday speech and rarely realise it.

• Lame excuse — it’s the man making the excuse who is lame.
• A wonderful day — it is the person making the…