What effect does the symbol have on the meaning of the passage from "here is new york"?

the commuter is the queerest bird of all. the suburb he inhabits has no essential vitality of its own and is a mere roost where he comes at day’s end to go to sleep.

Which techniques best describe the tone the author is using in this passage?

From his studies of coptic, champollion knew that the egyptian word for "sun" was pronounced rah. he wrote down the first two letters of that sound, ra. next he put a question mark for the unknown middle hieroglyph. then, at the end, he wrote ss, the sound of the last two hieroglyphs. he studied the combination: ra ? ss. suddenly he remembered a famous pharaoh whose name appeared in ancient greek chronicles and also in the biblical book of exodus: rameses, or ramesses. could this be a hieroglyphic representation of ramesses' name? based on the excerpt, what detail did champollion need to conclude that the hieroglyphics might represent ramesses’s name?

That pattern of stanzas from which a poem is built is called ?