Hyperbole, the counterpart of understatement, deliberately exaggerates conditions for emphasis or effect. In formal writing the hyperbole must be clearly intended as an exaggeration, and should be carefully restricted. That is, do not exaggerate everything, but treat hyperbole like an exclamation point, to be used only once a year. Then it will be quite effective as a table-thumping attention getter, introductory to your essay or some section thereof:
- There are a thousand reasons why more research is needed on solar energy.
Or it can make a single point very enthusiastically:
- I said "rare," not "raw." I've seen cows hurt worse than this get up and get well.
Or you can exaggerate one thing to show how really different it is from something supposedly similar to which it is being compared:
- This stuff is used motor oil compared to the coffee you make, my love.
- If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. --Luke 14:26 (NASB)
Hyperbole is the most overused and overdone rhetorical figure in the whole world (and that is no hyperbole); we are a society of excess and exaggeration. Nevertheless, hyperbole still has a rightful and useful place in art and letters; just handle it like dynamite, and do not blow up everything you can find.
