This Literary Device Makes Your Writing Sound More Poetic — Here’s How to Use It

If you're wondering how to spice up your writing, one way is through using literary devices. Read on to learn about this lyrical literary tool.

Alliteration is the use of multiple words that start with the same letter or sound in close succession. It's a literary device that can make a poem or prose more audibly appealing. Alliteration can also help draw emphasis to certain words or ideas. When it's used in excess, you can end up with tongue twisters such as “She sells seashells by the seashore” or “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” The rules governing what “counts” as alliteration aren’t carved in stone; there's heavy alliteration (such as the tongue twisters above) and very light alliteration, such as “I lost my favorite locket.”

Alliteration has many uses. From poetry to speeches, marketing to giving presentations, writing narratives to even creating a cover letter, alliteration can play a role. Below are some benefits of using this device.

Different phonemes have different connotations. The sound of the letter “s” often reminds readers or listeners of snakes and of hushed, slow warnings or sly behavior, whereas a hard sound, such as “b,” can quicken the pace of a sentence and make it almost bouncy. Alliteration can change the pace of a sentence or paragraph and change the transitions between words and sentences. These factors affect the rhythm of a poem, speech or cover letter.

Whether you really want your employees to pay attention to a certain request, customers to remember a slogan or readers to think about a given line, alliteration is a great way to emphasize certain words or a sentence and make it stick in people’s minds. The Association for Psychological Science released a study in 2008 that showed alliteration was an effective tool for memory. In the report, they write, “Participants in the same-alliteration condition were able to recall the most from the literature they read,” compared to participants who read literature with alliterative sounds that changed throughout, or no alliteration at all.

Similar to setting a rhythm, setting a mood can be accomplished through alliteration. Whereas setting a rhythm has to do with specific words and the spaces between them, setting a mood is more “big picture” and has to do with sentences and their transitions. Using a consistently soft alliterative sound such as “s” or “h” can make the mood of your piece calming or quietly unnerving, depending on the specifics, whereas using a consistently hard alliterative sound such as “k” or “b” can set an energetic or domineering tone, again depending on context and specifics.

If you want to utilize alliteration, first identify your goals for writing. Is this poem supposed to drip romance? Is this speech supposed to inspire? Is this presentation supposed to convince? Identifying these goals, specific and broad, will help you use alliteration to your benefit. Simply stringing together words with similar-sounding starts (see what I did there?) isn’t going to help you if the effects of the alliteration don’t match your goals. Like any form of figurative language, alliteration will backfire if you are throwing it just to have it, without a specific purpose.

Once you have a goal, say cheering employees up with an email after a setback, you're ready to start experimenting with alliteration. Letters that are too soft or evoke sad emotions — “f,” “h,” “o,” “s,” etc. — should be avoided for the alliteration. This doesn’t mean you have to avoid these sounds altogether — often, phonemes that can sound sad in excess have a completely different effect when used to transition between other letters. 

Next, identify which phonemes evoke the feelings you want to convey. Heavy use of “b's” can be uplifting and funny. “P’s” can be reassuring and evoke feelings of “looking forward.” “T’s” can even sound sarcastic and ready for anything. The mood set by different phonemes is going to depend, of course, on the content of your writing, the situation and how dense or heavy your alliteration is. Play around with it and try to feel how different combinations change your writing.

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