A Glossary of Trivium Terms

This glossary gathers the key terms from our series on the Trivium System, the framework Legacy Publishing uses to study an author's voice. Each entry gives a short, plain definition. For the full story behind each term, see the article listed in parentheses.

The framework

Trivium. The first three of the seven liberal arts taught in medieval universities: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In classical Latin, the word meant "a place where three roads meet." (What Is the Trivium System?)

Quadrivium. The other four liberal arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. (What Is the Trivium System?)

Trivium System. Legacy Publishing's framework for describing an author's voice in five layers: grammar, logic, rhetoric, voice and identity, and genre craft. (What Is the Trivium System?)

Voice profile. A written description of the habits that make an author's voice recognizable. Our editors use it to keep a book sounding like its author. (From First Conversation to Voice Profile)

Grammar

Clause. A group of words with a subject and a verb. An independent clause can stand alone as a sentence. A dependent clause cannot. (Grammar)

Simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences. The four sentence types, sorted by how many independent and dependent clauses they contain. (Grammar)

Fragment. A piece of a sentence punctuated as if it were whole. Writers sometimes use fragments on purpose for emphasis. (Grammar)

Active and passive voice. In the active voice, the subject acts ("Grandpa built the barn"). In the passive voice, the subject receives the action ("The barn was built by Grandpa"). (Grammar)

Mood. The attitude a verb shows. The indicative states facts, the imperative gives commands, and the subjunctive expresses wishes or things contrary to fact. (Grammar)

Diction. A writer's word choice. (Grammar)

Register. The level of formality in a piece of writing or speech. (Grammar)

Dialect, sociolect, and code-switching. Patterns of speech tied to a region or a social group, and the act of moving between them. (Grammar)

Logic

Dialectic. The older name for the art of reasoning and debate. Dorothy L. Sayers described it as covering logic and disputation. (Logic)

Argument, premise, conclusion. In logic, an argument is a set of statements (premises) given as reasons for another statement (the conclusion). (Logic)

Deduction. Reasoning from a general principle to a specific conclusion that must be true if the premises are true. (Logic)

Induction. Reasoning from specific cases to a general conclusion that is likely but not certain. (Logic)

Abduction. Reasoning from what we observe to the best explanation for it. It is also called inference to the best explanation, and the idea goes back to Charles Sanders Peirce. (Logic)

Enthymeme. For Aristotle, the kind of proof used in public speaking. It is often described as an argument that leaves a step unstated for the listener to supply. (Logic)

Antithesis. Setting contrasting words or ideas side by side. (Logic; Schemes and Tropes)

Rhetoric

Ethos, pathos, logos. Aristotle's three means of persuasion: through the speaker's character, the hearer's emotions, and the argument itself. (Rhetoric)

Grand, middle, and simple (or plain) styles. The three levels of style named in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and taken up by Cicero. (Rhetoric)

To teach, to delight, to persuade. Cicero's three aims of the speaker, which Augustine applied to Christian preaching. (Rhetoric)

Five canons of rhetoric. Invention (finding material), arrangement (ordering it), style (choosing the words), memory (retaining it), and delivery (presenting it). (The Five Canons)

Identification. Kenneth Burke's key term in A Rhetoric of Motives. For Burke, one person is identified with another insofar as their interests are joined. (The Thinkers Behind Modern Writing)

Figures of speech

Scheme. An artful change in the ordinary arrangement of words. (Schemes and Tropes)

Trope. An artful change in the ordinary meaning of a word. (Schemes and Tropes)

Anaphora. Repeating the same words at the start of successive clauses or sentences. (Schemes and Tropes)

Parallelism. Giving related words, phrases, or clauses the same structure. (Schemes and Tropes)

Tricolon. A series of three parallel parts. (Schemes and Tropes)

Chiasmus. Repeating ideas or structures in reverse order, in an A-B-B-A pattern. Antimetabole is the form in which the same words come back reversed. (Schemes and Tropes)

Metaphor. A comparison that speaks of one thing as another. (Schemes and Tropes)

Simile. An open comparison, usually using "like" or "as." (Schemes and Tropes)

Litotes. Understatement made by denying the opposite. (Schemes and Tropes)

Alliteration, assonance, consonance. Repeated consonant sounds (usually at the start of words), repeated vowel sounds, and repeated consonant sounds within or at the end of words. (Schemes and Tropes)

Voice and identity

Aesthetic lineage. The earlier voices a writer's voice descends from. (Voice and Identity)

Silence patterns. The subjects or moves a writer consistently leaves out. (Voice and Identity)

Self-disclosure. How much, and when, a writer reveals about their own life and struggles. (Voice and Identity)

Genre and narrative

Genre conventions. The familiar patterns readers expect from a kind of book. (Genre Craft)

Point of view. The position from which a story is told: first person, second person, or third person. (Genre Craft)

Unreliable narrator. A narrator whose account the reader should not fully trust. Wayne C. Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction helped make it a standard critical term. (Genre Craft)

Scene and summary. A scene shows a moment in full. A summary covers time quickly. (Genre Craft; Order and Pace)

Narratology. The study of how stories are put together. Gérard Genette's Narrative Discourse is one of its major works. (Order and Pace)

Order, duration, frequency. Genette's three ways the telling of a story can differ from its events: in sequence, in speed, and in how many times something is told. (Order and Pace)

Analepsis and prolepsis. The technical terms for flashback and flash-forward. (Order and Pace)

In medias res. Latin for "into the middle of things." It means beginning a story in the middle of the action. (Logic; Order and Pace)

Ellipsis and pause. Skipping time entirely, or stopping the clock to describe or reflect. (Order and Pace)

Keep this page handy

You can write a good book without knowing every term. Still, naming what you already do is a powerful step. At Legacy Publishing, these words give our team a shared language to protect what makes your voice yours as we lead you from manuscript to finished book.