“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” This opening line from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” displays an example of the literary device anaphora, which is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. We see “it was the” repeated four times, then a contrast of  “best” and “worst,” and “age of wisdom” with “age of foolishness.” While we’re not all writers on the level of Dickens, using anaphora is a tidy way to emphasize a certain point or elicit a strong emotional response from a reader. The key is to employ it strategically, rather than in every sentence.