All the picture words from this chapter. Test yourself, spot mixed pictures in a paragraph, and choose the plain word when two would clash.
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Five families, one procedure, and the two warnings that are not about style at all.
Thirty items, five families. Sorting by picture is what lets you check compatibility instead of memorising pairs.
Sort each item into the correct category
Twelve items. In five the plain word wins — because a second picture would clash, or because the imagery would assert something you did not mean.
Twelve items across the five families. Every option is made of ordinary academic words used correctly.
Picture each sentence literally before you answer. In five of the twelve the plain word wins — sometimes because a second picture would clash, sometimes because the imagery would put a position in your essay that you did not intend.
Which sentence mixes metaphor families in a way a reader would notice?
A passage that uses all five families without ever mixing them. Four of the ten gaps take the plain word.
The city's housing strategy rests on a single untested assumption: that building more homes will bring prices down. That assumption is the of everything else in the document, and nothing in the document examines it.
Between 2015 and 2021 the number of households arriving from other regions sharply. The plain word matters here — a review that means to be balanced should not describe people as a flood.
Attitudes among existing residents hardened over the same period, and three consultation exercises failed to shift them. They are now deeply .
The maintenance backlog on existing stock has meanwhile been by the argument about new supply. Nothing conceals it, the figures are published annually, and next to a housing crisis nobody reads them.
Commentators have long described the subject as a political , though a balanced review would say only that the reform position has since 2018.
Support for the current strategy has ebbed since the last election, and the for it was thin to begin with.
The council's own repair team through the 2010s — not through disuse, and not because funding was withdrawn, but because two contractors went bankrupt and were never replaced.
Rural connectivity remains in the strategy: nothing prevents its discussion, nothing more dramatic crowds it out, and no document hides it.
Where the council has genuinely something — the 2019 viability assessment was withheld for two years — the criticism should be made in plain terms rather than in imagery.
A hard ceiling of four items, and a paragraph that has to be picturable as a coherent scene.
Prompt
Many governments now spend more on prisons than on the services that reduce offending. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
Write ONE body paragraph, 180–260 words, arguing either side.
The ceiling is four. At most four items from this chapter — from any of the five families. Fewer is not weaker. Zero is defensible.
Before you submit, run the chapter's procedure on the whole paragraph, not sentence by sentence:
Name the picture. Scan for a second one. If you find one, change it to the plain word.
And check the two warnings that are not about style:
You may invent plausible detail about a country or a programme. Do not present invented figures as published research.
180–260 words. At most four chapter items.
Item and family. Writing them out IS the compatibility check.
If you cannot describe it as one coherent scene, the families have mixed.
Name the ones you are leaving behind. Deciding not to use a vivid word is a result, not a retreat.