Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. It is one of the oldest sound devices in literature, predating rhyme in English poetry; Old English verse like Beowulf was structured entirely around alliterative patterns rather than end-rhyme. Alliteration creates a musical quality in prose and poetry, binding words together aurally and making phrases more memorable. It can also create specific tonal effects: soft alliteration (s, l, m) suggests gentleness, while hard alliteration (b, d, k) suggests force or aggression.

In Paradise Lost, Milton uses alliteration to reinforce meaning: "Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved / His vastness" piles up B sounds to evoke the creature's bulk. Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven is rich with alliteration, as in "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." In contemporary prose, Cormac McCarthy frequently employs alliteration to give his descriptions a biblical cadence: "the thin and trembling trees" or "silence and solitude."

Use alliteration with restraint and purpose. A well-placed alliterative phrase can make a sentence sing; too much alliteration makes prose sound like a tongue-twister or a children's book. The most effective alliteration is often invisible on first reading, contributing to the rhythm and mood of a passage without calling attention to itself as a technique. Read your prose aloud to hear where alliteration enhances the sentence and where it overwhelms it. In dialogue, characters generally should not speak alliteratively unless you are deliberately creating a mannered or poetic voice.