Amplification examples show how sentences can shine with an increase in information. See how amplification in writing can have an impact on the audience!
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
“Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their place was new, . . . their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly-married as was lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new baby . . .”
Dickens used the phrases "new," "bran-new," and "spick and span new" often. The neighbors' newness is amplified by this recurrence.
The Twits, by Roald Dahl
“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.”
In Dahl's passage, it's not only that having nasty thoughts may make a person ugly; it can also cause their ugliness to intensify over time. The amplification in this line paints a complex picture of a face that changes, going from terrible to much more hideous.
Living to Tell the Tale, by Gabriel García Márquez
“At that time Bogota was a remote, lugubrious city where an insomniac rain had been falling since the beginning of the 16th century.”
Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, rain had not actually been raining in Bogotá, but Márquez utilizes hyperbole to emphasize how drenched the city had become. He also used personification, referring to the rain as "insomniac."
