Using figurative language One good way to communicate with an audience is by using figurative language, or figures of speech. Far from being mere decoration, figurative language plays a crucial role in helping us follow a writer's meaning.
Similes make explicit the comparison between two things by using like, as, as if, or as though.
The comb felt as if it was raking my skin off. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens Analogies compare similar features of two dissimilar things and are often extended to several sentences or paragraphs in length. Before you use an analogy, though, make sure that the two things you are comparing have enough points of similarity to justify the comparison and make it convincing to readers. One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street was to Harlem what the Mississippi was to the South, a long traveling river always going somewhere, carrying something. Mixed metaphors are comparisons that are not consistent.