Elocutio is the term for the mastery of stylistic elements in Western classical rhetoric and comes from the Latin, loqui, "to speak". Although today, we association the word, elocution, more with eloquent speaking, for the classical rhetorician, it connoted "style."

It is the one of five canons of classical rhetoric (the others being inventio, dispositio, memoria, and pronuntiatio) that concern the crafting and delivery of speeches and writing. Beginning in the Renaissance, writers increasingly emphasized the stylistic aspects of rhetoric over the other divisions of rhetoric.

An orator or writer had a number of things to decide in developing a style for a particular discourse. First, there was the level of style: plain (attenuata or subtile), middle (mediocris or robusta), or high (florida or gravis). Writers were instructed to match the basic style to their subject matter and their audience. For instance, Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria deemed the plain style suitable for instruction, the middle for moving oration, and the high for charming discourse. Today, we associate elocution and rhetoric with the last of these styles, but for rhetoricians, each style was useful in rhetoric.

A great amount of attention was paid to figures of speech, which were classified into various types and sub-types. One Renaissance writer, Henry Peacham enumerated 184 different figures of speech, although it could be argued that this was a manifestation of the increasing over-emphasis on style that began in the Renaissance.

Also important to elocutio were subjects we would generally regard as grammatical: the proper use of punctuation and conjunctions; the desirable order of words in a sentence (unlike English, many languages are not as dependent on word order); and the length of sentences.

See Also

• Figure of speech
• Rhetoric