Authors: Use Alliteration for Illumination of Your Book Title

Alliteration is a very useful literary tool. Alliteration is simply defined as the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words and also the repetition of an initial consonant sound, as in "a peck of pickled peppers." Incorporating alliteration into your book title can help people remember your work and it will stick out in people's minds.

Here are a few examples of books with alliteration in their titles:

The Teeny Tiny Teacher by Stephanie Calmenson
The Magical, Mystical, Marvelous Coat by Catherine Ann Cullen
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Love's Labor's Lost by William Shakespeare
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Roger Parker of personalbrandingblog.com explained on his website, "Sometimes the most important lessons in personal branding are the simplest ones, like using alliteration, or repeated “hard” sounds, to make the title of your brand-building book stand out and be easy to remember." You want readers, fans, and your potential audience to enjoy your book's title. Alliteration can help that title roll off the tongue nicely. If your book's title is memorable and fun or easy to say, people will talk about it. The alliteration will stand out in conversation or in the review section of a website.

According to Mike Ball, author of 'Banjos, Boats and Butt Dialing', alliteration can be a very effective tool for a humorist. Ball explains, "I rarely use it for serious subjects but judiciously used, alliteration is an author's best friend. Since humor is all about timing, alliteration forces the reader to participate in the timing you are trying to set up. That's why my book title 'Banjos, Boats and Butt Dialing' gets people to laugh before they crack the cover."

As J.R.R. Tolkien observed, alliteration "depends not on letters but on sounds." Thus the phrase know-nothing is alliterative, but climate change is not."

Domey Malasarn from the website "The Literary Lab" feels that alliteration can belong in titles as well as within your book. "I have used it on occasion myself in places where I thought it was helpful. For example, if I had a sentence like 'Alfred was furious.' I might revise it to "Alfred was angry." because to me it pairs the subject of the sentence with his emotion a little more powerfully."

Puja Lalwani of buzzle.com explains, "The importance of alliteration should not be undermined as just another literary device that is beyond comprehension. It is highly useful and most invaluable, whether just to drive a point home, make for a fun read, or as a marketing tool that will leave your product etched in the mind of the consumer."

On the website, helium.com, Stella McIntyre perfectly outlines the benefits of using alliteration across various mediums. "Although most commonly used in literature, most particularly poetry, alliteration can also be found in non-fiction writing: leaflets, newspaper headlines, advertising and merchandising. Its effect is twofold. Firstly it draws attention to and emphasizes a phrase and secondly, it can create connotations that significantly add to the understanding and enjoyment of a writer's meaning."

The Bottom Line: Alliteration in book titles will help people remember your book title because it will help your work stand out and engage your reader before they even open your book.