2475: Asyndeton Sep 21, 2021

Asyndeton is a literary device of removing conjunctions between related clauses, such as the famous Latin line 'veni; vidi; vici' (I came; I saw; I conquered). These can be on the level of whole phrases and clauses, as in the example before, or merely a series of adjuncts "softly, carefully, she walked down the stairs" or other sorts of features just so long as the conjuncts have no conjunction. This literary device helps to add emphasis, memorability and a certain smoothness to the language.