Authorial Choices: The Full List for IB English, With Examples and How to Analyse Them

Authorial choices are the decisions a writer makes on purpose to shape what a text means and how it feels. Every word, sentence length, image, point of view and layout decision counts. In IB English, you're marked on how well you spot these choices and explain what they do.

This guide gives you the full authorial choices list, sorted into eight groups, with a plain definition and a real example for each one. Then it shows you how to turn a choice into analysis that scores, with one sentence written at three different mark levels. It's written by Educifly's IB English specialists, who have coached students through Paper 1, Paper 2 and the Individual Oral since 2018.

Quick answer: what are authorial choices?

Authorial choices are the deliberate decisions a writer, speaker or designer makes to create meaning and affect an audience. They include word choice (diction), imagery, sentence structure, sound, tone, point of view, structure, rhetorical moves and, in non-literary texts, visual choices like layout, colour and font. In IB English A, Criterion B of Paper 1 asks for "analysis of textual features and/or authorial choices" and an evaluation of how they "shape meaning". Naming a choice earns very little on its own. The marks come from explaining what the choice does, why the writer made it, and how it serves the text's purpose for its audience.

A simple rule to remember: choice + effect + purpose. Without the last two parts, you're just listing.

What counts as an authorial choice?

Anything in a text that the writer could have done differently counts as an authorial choice. If there was another option and the writer picked this one, you can analyse it.

That's a wider net than most students cast. They look for metaphors and alliteration because those are easy to label. But a writer also chooses:

• who tells the story

• where the text starts and where it stops

• what gets left out

• which sentence gets its own paragraph

• whether a photo is in colour or black and white

• whether the ending resolves or hangs open

Each of those is a choice. Often the big-picture ones are worth more marks than the small devices, because they shape the whole text rather than one line.

Authorial choices vs textual features vs stylistic devices

Students often ask whether these three terms mean the same thing. They overlap, but they aren't identical. Here is how IB teachers usually separate them.

The IB rubric uses "textual features and/or authorial choices" together, so you don't need to worry about using the "right" word. What matters is the thinking. A textual feature is the what. An authorial choice is the why. Good analysis always gets to the why.

Where are authorial choices marked in IB English?

Authorial choices are assessed in every IB English A component, but they carry the most weight in Paper 1 Criterion B. The same skill also drives Paper 2, the Individual Oral (IO) and the HL essay.

IB English A comes in two courses: Language and Literature (Lang and Lit) and Literature. Both use the same assessment structure. The main difference is that Lang and Lit Paper 1 gives you non-literary texts, like adverts, speeches, infographics and articles. Literature Paper 1 gives you literary texts: poetry, prose fiction, drama or literary non-fiction.

A few numbers worth knowing:

• Paper 1 is 1 hour 15 minutes at SL for one text, and 2 hours 15 minutes at HL for two texts. Each response is marked out of 20 across four criteria of 5 marks each. The rubric is the same at SL and HL.

• Paper 2 changed for exams from May 2026. It's now marked out of 25 across five criteria of 5 marks each: A, B1, B2, C and D. B1 covers your analysis of each work, including its authorial choices. B2 is the new, separate mark for comparison.

• The IO is a 15-minute oral (up to 10 minutes of talk plus 5 minutes of questions), marked out of 40. Criterion B asks how the writer's choices present your global issue. If you haven't picked one yet, our list of 50 IB global issues sorts them by field of inquiry.

So when your teacher says "more analysis of authorial choices", they're talking about the mark that decides most IB English grades.

The authorial choices list at a glance

There are eight main groups of authorial choices: diction, imagery, syntax, sound, voice, structure, rhetoric and visual design. Nearly every choice you'll meet in an IB text fits into one of them.

The next eight sections go through each group. Each has a table with a short definition, a real example, and what the choice can do. Treat the last column as a set of possibilities, not rules. The same choice can do different jobs in different texts.

1. Diction and word choice

Diction is the writer's choice of individual words, and it's the most common authorial choice in any text. Every word has a dictionary meaning and a set of feelings attached to it. Writers pick words for both.

When you write about diction, don't stop at "the word shows". Ask what the other options were. If a charity advert says "children are starving" instead of "children may be hungry", the writer chose certainty over caution. That choice makes the problem feel present and undeniable. That's analysis.

2. Imagery and figurative language

Imagery is language that creates a picture or sensation in the reader's mind, and figurative language makes that picture work by comparison. This is the group most students know best. The trap is labelling it without explaining the comparison.

The Owen example shows how to analyse a simile. The label is easy. The point is the gap between what we expect soldiers to look like (strong, young) and what Owen shows us (old, bent, begging). That gap is his argument against war.

3. Syntax and sentence structure

Syntax is how a writer builds sentences: their length, order and punctuation. Students skip syntax because it feels technical. It's actually one of the easiest groups to score on, because so few students write about it well.

Short sentences don't always create tension. That's a common mistake. They can also sound calm, confident, childlike or matter-of-fact. The context decides. In an instruction leaflet, short sentences make steps easy to follow. In a thriller, they speed up the heartbeat.

4. Sound and rhythm

Sound choices shape how a text feels when it's read aloud, and they matter most in poetry, speeches and slogans. If a text was written to be heard, check this group first.

A tip for exams: don't analyse alliteration just because it's there. Only use a sound choice if it links to the meaning. "The plosive 'b' sounds make the violence feel physical" is useful. "There is alliteration on 'b'" is not.

5. Voice, perspective and tone

Voice covers who is speaking, from what position, and with what attitude. These are big-picture choices, and they often open up the whole text.

Tone and mood are different. Tone is the writer's attitude. Mood is the feeling the reader gets. A writer can use a calm tone to create a frightening mood. That gap is worth analysing.

Pronouns are one of the most useful choices in non-literary texts. A politician who says "we" puts themselves alongside the audience. A campaign that says "they" builds an enemy. Watch for the moment a text switches from one to the other.

6. Structure and form

Structure is how a text is ordered from start to finish, and form is the shape or genre it takes. In practice essays, structure is the group students skip most often. That makes it one of the best places to pick up marks.

A great example of structure is the end of Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House (1879). The last thing the audience hears is a door slamming shut as Nora leaves. Ibsen could have ended with dialogue. He chose a sound. That single choice made the ending famous, because it left no room for Nora to be talked back inside.

To spot structure fast in an exam, ask three questions. How does it start? Where does it change? How does it end? Those three points give you a paragraph each.

7. Rhetoric and persuasion

Rhetorical choices are the tools a writer uses to persuade, and they appear in almost every non-literary text on Lang and Lit Paper 1. Speeches, adverts, opinion pieces and charity appeals all run on rhetoric.

Rhetoric is where evaluation matters most. Don't assume a technique works. A statistic without a source may make a reader suspicious. A guilt-heavy appeal might push some readers away. Saying "the writer tries to" or "the reader may feel" shows the examiner you're judging the choice, not just naming it.

8. Visual and layout choices

Visual choices are the design decisions in a non-literary text: layout, images, colour, fonts and space. On Lang and Lit Paper 1, you'll often get an advert, infographic, poster, website or leaflet. Ignoring the visuals means ignoring half the text.

The most useful visual term is gaze. If a person in a photo looks straight at you, they "demand" something from you, often sympathy or action. If they look away, you "observe" them, which feels more like watching a story. Charity adverts use direct gaze on purpose.

Which authorial choices should you look for first, by text type?

The best choices to analyse depend on the type of text, so start with the ones that text type relies on most. You won't have time to look for everything in a 75-minute exam. Go where the meaning is.

Drama gets its own note. In a play, the stage directions are authorial choices too. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot ends with the two main characters agreeing to leave, and then the stage direction says they don't move. The gap between what they say and what they do sums up the whole play. That's a stage direction doing more work than any line of dialogue.

The big-picture choices most students miss

The authorial choices that earn the highest marks are often the big ones: what's left out, who gets a voice, and where the text chooses to end. These are harder to spot because there's no label for them in a device list. That's exactly why examiners reward them.

Here are six worth checking in every text:

1. Omission. What isn't mentioned? A fashion ad that shows the clothes but never the factory is making a choice.

2. Who speaks, and who doesn't. In a news article, whose quotes appear? Whose don't?

3. The title. Writers choose titles with care. A title can be ironic, can frame the whole text, or can give away the ending.

4. Genre choice. Why is this a poem and not an essay? Why an open letter and not a speech?

5. Placement. What's put first, and what's buried at the bottom? In adverts, the small print at the bottom is a choice.

6. Silence and white space. A pause, a blank line or an unfinished sentence can say more than words.

If your Paper 1 response discusses even one of these well, it will stand out from the pile of essays that only list metaphors.

How to analyse an authorial choice, step by step

To analyse an authorial choice, name it, quote it, zoom in on one word, explain the effect, and link it to the writer's purpose. We call this the five-step chain. Each step adds marks.

Most students stop after step 2. Criterion B marks begin to climb at step 4. The top bands need step 5, plus a sense of how choices work together.

Use tentative language when you explain effects. Words like "suggests", "invites", "may prompt" and "positions the reader to" show you understand that readers respond differently. It also sounds more like a real critic.

The same authorial choice, written at three mark levels

The difference between a Criterion B score of 2 and a 5 is not how many devices you spot, but how deeply you explain one. Here is one choice, from an invented charity advert, written three ways.

The advert text reads: "Tonight, 4,000 people in this city will sleep outside. You won't see them. That's the point."

Level 2 (identifies the choice):

The writer uses a short sentence, "That's the point." This makes the reader think.

This names a feature and gives vague effect. There's no zoom and no purpose. It sits in the lower bands.

Level 3 to 4 (explains the effect):

The short final sentence, "That's the point," stands out after the longer statistic before it. Its bluntness surprises the reader and suggests that homelessness is hidden on purpose, which makes the problem seem more serious.

This is better. It quotes, compares sentence lengths and explains an effect. But it doesn't link to the advert's purpose or to other choices.

Level 5 (evaluates how choices work together):

The advert moves from a precise statistic, "4,000 people", to a direct accusation, "You won't see them", and finally to the clipped fragment "That's the point." The shift from number to "you" narrows the focus from the city to the individual reader, so the problem stops being abstract. The final sentence then turns the reader's not-seeing into the argument itself: invisibility is not an accident but the cause. By ending on this blunt, almost confrontational note, the advert positions the reader as part of the problem, which is exactly the discomfort a donation appeal needs to create before it asks for money.

This version links three choices (statistic, direct address, fragment), zooms in on "you" and "point", and ties everything to the advert's purpose. That's what "insightful and convincing analysis" looks like in practice.

A worked Paper 1 paragraph on authorial choices

A strong Paper 1 body paragraph is built around one claim about meaning, supported by two or three connected authorial choices. Here is a full example using an invented tourism web page.

The text: A travel website for a small island shows a wide photo of an empty white beach. The headline, in a thin, lower-case font, reads: "nothing to do. finally." Below it: "No crowds. No queues. No signal. Just you, the sea, and the time you forgot you had." A small "Book your escape" button sits in the bottom corner.

Guiding question: How does the text create a sense of escape?

The paragraph:

The web page sells escape by presenting absence as luxury. The lower-case headline, "nothing to do. finally.", rejects the capital letters and punctuation readers expect from a headline, so the design itself seems to have relaxed. The word "finally" reframes boredom as relief, implying the reader is already exhausted by a busy life. This idea is extended through the list of fragments, "No crowds. No queues. No signal.", where each repeated "No" removes another modern pressure, and the missing verbs make the sentences feel as still as the empty beach in the photograph. The shift to "Just you" then fills that emptiness with the reader, so the island is offered not as a place but as a return to oneself. Even the small booking button, placed in a corner rather than at the centre, suggests the website is too calm to push, which paradoxically makes the soft sell more persuasive for a tired, overworked audience.

Count the choices: typography, diction, fragments, anaphora, pronoun shift, image, layout. But the paragraph never feels like a list, because every choice serves one claim: absence is sold as luxury.

Verbs to use instead of "the author uses"

Replace "the author uses" with a precise verb that says what the choice does. This one habit lifts both your Criterion B (analysis) and Criterion D (language) marks.

Keep your own voice. Examiners don't reward fancy words for their own sake. They reward precise ones.

How many authorial choices should you analyse?

In a Paper 1 response, three to five well-developed authorial choices beat ten briefly named ones. Examiners reward depth over coverage. There is no set number in the rubric.

A useful plan for a 75-minute SL response:

• Introduction: text type, audience, purpose and your main argument (thesis).

• Body paragraph 1: one claim, backed by two or three connected choices, usually from the opening.

• Body paragraph 2: a second claim, often about a shift or the middle of the text.

• Body paragraph 3: a third claim, often about structure, visuals or the ending.

• Conclusion: how the choices work together to achieve the purpose.

Organise paragraphs by ideas or effects, not by device. Paragraphs headed "Metaphor", "Repetition", "Pronouns" tend to fall apart. English Collaborative, which writes guidance for IB English teachers, notes that responses organised by authorial choices "tend to be limiting". Criterion C (focus and organisation) is where this costs you.

At HL, you write two responses in 2 hours 15 minutes. That's about 65 minutes each, so the same plan applies, a little tighter.

Common mistakes with authorial choices

The most common mistake is feature spotting: naming a choice without explaining what it does. Here are the others we see most often in Paper 1 practice essays, and how to fix them.

A note on the last row. The guiding question on Paper 1 is optional. You can choose your own focus. But if you ignore it, you need another clear focus on a formal or technical aspect of the text, or your essay drifts.

A 20-minute practice routine for authorial choices

The fastest way to get better at authorial choices is short, daily practice on unseen texts, not memorising longer lists. Here's a routine our IB English tutors give students in the months before exams.

1. Minutes 1–3: Read a short unseen text: an advert, a poem, a news opening. Write one sentence on what it's for and who it's for.

2. Minutes 4–8: Annotate. Find five choices from at least three different groups in the list above.

3. Minutes 9–11: Cross out the two weakest. Keep the three that link to one idea.

4. Minutes 12–18: Write one full paragraph using the five-step chain for all three.

5. Minutes 19–20: Check it. Did every choice get an effect and a purpose? Circle any "the author uses" and replace it.

Do this five days a week for a month and you'll have written 20 practice paragraphs. That's more Criterion B practice than most students get in a whole year. If you want someone to mark those paragraphs against the IB rubric, that's exactly what our online IB English tutors do in weekly sessions.

How authorial choices affect your final IB English grade

Criterion B is worth a quarter of every Paper 1 mark, so improving your analysis of authorial choices by one band can move your final grade. Here's the maths.

At SL, Paper 1 is 35% of your grade and marked out of 20. Criterion B is 5 of those 20 marks. Moving from a 3 to a 4 on Criterion B adds 1 mark out of 20, which is 5% of the paper and about 1.75% of your final IB English grade. That's before counting the knock-on effect: better analysis usually lifts Criterion A (interpretation) and Criterion C (focus) at the same time.

Because the same skill runs through Paper 2 B1, the IO and the HL essay, a one-band improvement in analysing choices tends to show up across every component. If you're weighing whether to take English at HL or SL, know that HL doubles the Paper 1 workload: two texts instead of one.

It also helps to know the exact meaning of the command terms in your questions. "Analyse", "evaluate" and "compare" each ask for something different. Our guide to IB command terms breaks them down.

For a wider view of how English fits into scoring a 7 across the Diploma, read our guide on how to score a 7 in IB.

Frequently asked questions about authorial choices

What are authorial choices in IB English?

Authorial choices are the deliberate decisions a writer makes to shape meaning and affect the audience. They include word choice, imagery, sentence structure, sound, tone, point of view, structure, rhetoric and visual design. In IB English, Paper 1 Criterion B marks how well you analyse these choices and evaluate how they shape meaning.

What is an example of an authorial choice?

A simple example is the opening of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Dickens chose parallel structure and opposites (antithesis) to show a society split between extremes. Another is Nike's slogan "Just Do It", where the choice of a short command pushes the reader to act.

What is the difference between authorial choices and literary devices?

Literary devices are specific named techniques, like metaphor or alliteration. Authorial choices are wider. They include devices, but also big decisions like who narrates, where a text ends, what is left out, and how a page is laid out. Every literary device is an authorial choice, but not every authorial choice is a literary device.

What is the difference between authorial choices and textual features?

A textual feature is something you can point to in the text, like a bold headline or a rhetorical question. An authorial choice is the decision behind it. The IB rubric uses both terms together ("textual features and/or authorial choices"), so you won't lose marks for using either. What matters is explaining why the feature is there.

How many authorial choices should I include in Paper 1?

Aim for three to five well-developed choices in each Paper 1 response. Three choices explained in depth, linked to one argument, will score higher than ten choices named in passing. Group them into two or three body paragraphs, each built around one idea about the text's meaning.

Are authorial choices the same in Lang and Lit and Literature?

The idea is the same in both courses, and the Paper 1 rubric is identical. The difference is the texts. Lang and Lit Paper 1 uses non-literary texts like adverts, speeches and infographics, so visual and rhetorical choices matter more. Literature Paper 1 uses poetry, prose, drama and literary non-fiction, so voice, imagery, sound and structure matter more.

What authorial choices should I look for in an advertisement?

Start with visual choices: layout, colour, typography, the image and where the people in it are looking. Then check the slogan or headline for imperatives, direct address, pronouns and wordplay. Finally, look at structure: what's placed first, what's in the small print, and where the call to action sits.

Do I need to know the technical names of every authorial choice?

No. Precise terms help, and they can lift your Criterion D (language) mark. But the IB rewards analysis, not vocabulary. If you're unsure of a term, describe the choice plainly, for example "the writer places the shortest sentence last", and explain its effect. A wrong label looks worse than a clear description.

How do authorial choices work in the Individual Oral?

In the IO, you analyse how authorial choices in one literary text and one non-literary text (or two literary texts in the Literature course) present your chosen global issue. Criterion B of the IO is worth 10 of the 40 marks. The skill is the same as Paper 1, but every choice must link back to the global issue.

Why do examiners say "don't feature spot"?

Feature spotting means listing techniques without explaining them. It's the most common reason students stay in the middle bands of Criterion B. Examiners want to know what a choice does and why the writer made it. One choice explained well is worth more than five choices named.

How can I get better at analysing authorial choices quickly?

Practise short and often. Take one unseen text a day, find five choices, keep the best three, and write one paragraph that explains the effect and purpose of each. Get feedback on those paragraphs against the IB criteria. Most students see a band improvement within a month of steady practice. You can book a free trial class with an Educifly IB English specialist to get your first paragraphs marked.