Grammar
Alliteration is the use of the two or more words in sequence that have the same sound in their first syllables. Take this example
Summing up, use alliterations sparingly. Sometimes they will happen naturally. Don’t give in to the temptation of using words you wouldn’t normally use (or aren’t entirely sure of) just for the sake of alliteration. This, my dear readers, is why this article isn’t titled “Awesome and Awful Alliterations”. For once I am practicing what I’m preaching.
- Rhetorically Speaking 3: Irony
In Search of Irony A couple of books I’m reading at the moment have made references to “ironic t-shirts”. This got me to thinking, what exactly is an ironic t-shirt and for that matter, what exactly is irony. It turns out that there are three main...
- Class Wars
We can't open our mouths without revealing the social class we come from. England is no exception here, possibly even the worst case of a class-obsessed society where everyone is able to tell exactly which social class somebody else belongs to. The...
- Vowels And Consonants
There are two types of meaning associated with the words 'vowel' and 'consonant'. First, the phonological definition says that consonants are simply those segments that occur at the edges of syllables, unlike vowels which occur at the...
- Awesome Revisited
It seems I'm not the only one to regret the passing of the sense of sheer wonder that the word awesome used to have before it became 'the contemporary superlative of choice'. Jemima Kiss at the Guardian (whose quote that is) apparently has...
- Fumbling About With The Style Rules Of English
These style rules come from a variety of sources, and have been adapted a bit by me. The principle with all of these rules is that each 'rule' contradicts itself. The original versions have been variously attributed to: The Fumblerules of Grammar...
Grammar
Rhetorically Speaking 2: Alliteration
Alliteration is the use of the two or more words in sequence that have the same sound in their first syllables. Take this example
The snake silently slitheredHere the ess sound is repeated three times. The repetition of sounds is very pleasing the to the human ear and sentences using alliteration take on a poetry-like nature. Made-up names for cartoon characters and comic-strip heroes often feature alliteration,
Micky Mouse, Donald Duck, Dan Dare.Then there are film and pop star names, characters in novels and fictional places,
Ronald Reagan, Janet Jackson, Peter Pan, Heartbreak HotelOveruse of alliteration can often become cliched. An example of this is in what we shall politely call the lower-quality press. Headlines like “Fox Found on 72nd Floor” (taken from today’s Sun) aren’t too bad, they just got lucky (and so did the fox). However, all too often, headline writers go out of their way to use alliteration and the results can sound contrived, such as this example which manages to pack two alliterations into one headline, “Can this cute cat secretly sense death?” (also from today’s Sun).
Summing up, use alliterations sparingly. Sometimes they will happen naturally. Don’t give in to the temptation of using words you wouldn’t normally use (or aren’t entirely sure of) just for the sake of alliteration. This, my dear readers, is why this article isn’t titled “Awesome and Awful Alliterations”. For once I am practicing what I’m preaching.
loading...
- Rhetorically Speaking 3: Irony
In Search of Irony A couple of books I’m reading at the moment have made references to “ironic t-shirts”. This got me to thinking, what exactly is an ironic t-shirt and for that matter, what exactly is irony. It turns out that there are three main...
- Class Wars
We can't open our mouths without revealing the social class we come from. England is no exception here, possibly even the worst case of a class-obsessed society where everyone is able to tell exactly which social class somebody else belongs to. The...
- Vowels And Consonants
There are two types of meaning associated with the words 'vowel' and 'consonant'. First, the phonological definition says that consonants are simply those segments that occur at the edges of syllables, unlike vowels which occur at the...
- Awesome Revisited
It seems I'm not the only one to regret the passing of the sense of sheer wonder that the word awesome used to have before it became 'the contemporary superlative of choice'. Jemima Kiss at the Guardian (whose quote that is) apparently has...
- Fumbling About With The Style Rules Of English
These style rules come from a variety of sources, and have been adapted a bit by me. The principle with all of these rules is that each 'rule' contradicts itself. The original versions have been variously attributed to: The Fumblerules of Grammar...