Today I thought we could have a bit of fun looking at alliteration.

What is alliteration?

Alliteration is the repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words.

Need an example?  Here’s three…

• Dozy Doug dug a deep ditch.
• He’s always naughty and nasty – not nice to know.
• The sweet smell of success.

Why would you want to use alliteration?

Alliteration is often used in poems or creative writing.  The repetitive nature of the sounds tends to draw attention to the phrase.  Therefore it is often used to add emphasis.  Another place that alliteration is often found is in tongue twisters.  It is the repetitive sounds that help jumble up your tongue.

How do you use alliteration?

Using alliteration is quite easy once you get the hang of it.  You just need to make some of your words in the same sentence have the same initial consonant sound.  The initial consonant sound is usually repeated in two neighboring words although sometimes the repetition occurs also in words that are not neighbors.

It is really important to remember however that only the repetition of the same sound is valid in alliteration not the consonants themselves.

For example, “A neat knot need not be re-knotted.”

Although some of the words start with different consonants they still start with the same initial consonant sound.

Compared to, “a cute child.”  While both words start with the same consonant, they do not start with the same consonant sound.  Since the sounds differ, this is not alliteration.

Tongue Twisters

Remember how I said at the beginning of this post that tongue twisters are a type of writing that you often see alliteration used in?  Here are a couple of examples for you.  How fast can you say the tongue twisters without making a mistake?

Example One:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

 

Example Two:

If one doctor doctors another doctor

Does the doctor who doctors the doctor

Doctor the doctor the way the doctor he is doctoring doctors?

Or does the doctor doctor the way

The doctor who doctors doctors?

 

The doctoring doctor doctors the doctor the way

The doctoring doctor wants to doctor the doctor.

Not the way the doctored doctor wants to be doctored.

 

Example Three:

If Freaky Fred Found Fifty Feet of Fruit

And Fed Forty Feet to his Friend Frank

How many Feet of Fruit did Freaky Fred Find?