Writing With Grace

The Art of Alliteration

by Dim Aldebaran

Often, it’s the subtle things that really add elegance to a piece. With this series of articles, Writing With Grace will provide detailed explanations of writing techniques that can give the piece that polished feeling, and make it a pleasure to read over and over again.

Love linking letters? Or is alliteration an awkward and adverse apparatus to apply to anecdotes? Or perhaps one is perpetually pondering the possible persona of repetition?

Alliteration is a particularly powerful—and universal—writing technique, consisting of the repetition of the same sounds in a phrase. It is widely used in both prose and poetry. Indeed, everyone uses alliteration on a day-to-day basis, from common quips to words of wisdom. Here are some examples:

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
March Madness
Big Bang
Making Magic
Final Four
The More the Merrier
Sink or Swim
Sweet Sixteen
It Takes Two To Tango
Baby Boom
Boom or Bust
Live the Life
Turn the Tables
Above the Belt

The list goes on—not to mention the immense popularity of the tongue twister. Of course, alliteration is not just limited to phrases. Many popular products and characters also have such names:

King Kong
Coca-Cola
Woody Woodpecker
Mickey & Minnie Mouse
Clark Kent
Lex Luthor
Donald, Daffy & Daisy Duck
Bugs Bunny
Pontiac Pursuit

Or, try the protagonist’s opening monologue from the movie V for Vendetta:

“Voila! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and voracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so allow me to simply add that it is my very good honor to meet you, and you may call me V.”

Using alliteration, the screenwriters created an appropriate and memorable way to introduce a character called ‘V’.

Alliteration is so widely used because it is a simple and effective mnemonic device. It makes for a quick quip, or a catchy slogan. Alliteration can be used to create a clean, united phrase, or to call attention to particular words in the phrase. Even writing this, I find myself writing alliterative lines quite unconsciously.

However, alliteration is not the repetition of letters. Though ‘shoot’ and ‘snake’ begin with the same letter, ‘s’, they are not alliterative because they begin with different sounds. Nor do ‘tally’ and ‘think’, or ‘cat’ and ‘chug’. However, ‘phobia’ and ‘fat’ are alliterative, even though they do not start with the same letters. Also, alliteration is not purely the repetition of consonants: the alliteration of vowels is also widely used.

Nor is alliteration limited to repetition at the beginning of words: the repeating sounds can be anywhere in particular word, beginning, middle or end. However, it is generally more effective if the alliterated sound is on the stressed beats of the phrase.

Also, the gratuitous use of alliteration is a very easy pit to fall into. With overuse, it loses its effectiveness, the emphasis it can give to words, or the sense of unity it can grant a phrase. Serious lines can take an unwanted humorous tone with excessive alliteration. If you aren’t sure whether an alliterative line is effective or not, ask a beta reader! When in complete doubt, however, it’s best to take the alliteration out.

In alliteration, a distinction must be made: there is the classical, simplistic form, and then there are the more modern considerations in alliteration. The uses of classical alliteration will be outlined first, and the modern employs after.

Simple alliteration is also very useful for creating catchy, memorable titles: imagine a humorous ‘Bad Boy Butler’, an angsty ‘Doomsday’, or a sappy ‘Love Lingers’. Also, following the comicbook practice, OCs can be given alliterative names. Though ‘Tara Jones’ might not be very memorable, a ‘Tara Talinwright’ sticks a bit more in the head.

The most conspicuous use of alliteration is for humorous purposes. There are many limericks and tongue twisters out there whose sheer ridiculousness and surprising pronunciation difficulty will make you laugh. For example:

“Shelly sells sea shells by the sea shore.”
“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
“A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, ‘Let us flee’
‘Let us fly,’ said the flea,
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.”

Note how these use other techniques paired with alliteration: repetition, rhyming, rhythm, and so forth. Some also alliterate multiple sounds within the same phrase, which, though more complex, is also commonplace.

Alliteration is not only for humor, however. Its power to emphasize a phrase with relative ease, if not subtlety, is excellent for even the serious work. For example:

“…the slow cosine curves of the clouds, the parabolic paths of precipitation…”
“The word clung to her like mildew, gray, gruesome. ‘Friends’?”
“… that illusion of life called lust.”

Traditionally, alliteration is broken into two subcategories: assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, and consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds. However, these traditional distinctions will not be used here; rather, the primary distinction will be between hard sounds and soft sounds.

Hard sounds consist of the more guttural, harsh consonant sounds, like ‘c’ (as in ‘car’), ‘k’, ‘g’ (as in ‘go’), ‘t’, ‘s’, etc. It also consists of consonant combinations, like ‘st’ or ‘ck’. The vowels are the short, abrupt vowel sounds, like ‘a’ (as in ‘cat’), ‘i’ (as in ‘ick’), or ‘o’ (as in ‘got’).

Soft sounds are the smooth, lyrical sounds. Some consonant sounds include ‘g’ (as in ‘gem’), ‘j’, ‘d’, ‘m’, ‘n’, etc., and combinations like ‘sh’ and ‘kn’. The soft vowel sounds are long, like ‘a’ (as in ‘are’), ‘o’ (as in ‘or’), ‘i’ (as in ‘side’).

As you have probably noticed, the distinction between hard and soft sounds is not black-and-white; rather, a continuum. Purely hard or soft words are very rare. For example, though ‘cat’ is a very hard word, with its hard ‘c’ and ‘t’ and the short ‘a’, ‘car’ is somewhat softer, since though it still has the hard ‘c’ it also has a longer ‘a’ and a trailing ‘r’. Also, many sounds do not fit in either category, like ‘ch’ or ‘r’, and their hardness changes from word to word, usually depending on their position relative to other consonants and vowels.

Much of the distinction between the two is purely pronunciation, and cannot always be determined by merely reading the passage. Also, pronunciation of particular syllables and sounds may differ from dialect to dialect, and also between a native speaker and a foreigner—so what may be pronounced as a soft sound to a native New Yorker may be very hard to a German American.

With this distinction in mind, let’s take another look at alliteration. Hard sounds are harsh and sharp; soft sounds are smooth and musical. Alliterating with sound groups can be an extremely effective method to create a particular mood subtly, to bring a particular emotion to the reader’s mind. Guttural sounds are best used for the down-‘n’-dirty, the ugly, the horrific. Harsh, abrupt sounds create a sense of surprise, good for action sequences. Alternately, long vowels give an airy, lyrical feeling, a sense of music. Soft consonants give a rippling, calm feeling. Here are some examples:

“—and she’s leaving: stilettos tap-tap-tapping outside to the stars.”
“She dies, and as she dies she dreams—”
“He’s leaning against a wall; everything is lank and loose, cat uncoiled.”
“She makes a point of drowning every day—in the morning mass or during the family dinner fallacy or in the evening ****, doesn’t matter, as long as she drowns and she knows what she is as she dies.”

The best practice for humorous alliteration is writing limericks, or even just playing with oneliners. For the more serious practice, structured poetry is best so the alliteration is jointly practiced with rhythm, an important partner technique.

All examples left unsourced within the article are by the author.