Alliteration: yes or no?

I wouldn't overdo alliteration -- more than two or three is just circus writing. And at the risk of, well, assonance, "institutions and individuals" isn't really alliteration anyway ...

The place I see alliteration used the most -- and most awkwardly -- is in headlines, where somebody forces a verb so that it starts with the same letter as the winning mascot: Padres pummel Braves (when it's 6-5), Marlins massacre Mets (again, a 4-2 win) ...

 

Alliteration: Always awesome.

 

Because sometimes it reads well and flows well

 

In headlines, it's one of my favorite crutches.

In copy, only when it fits.

I think it was touched on earlier, but I've always believed some words carry a little zing from the spoken word to the printed because it's the reader's tendency to kind of hear them in their head.

 

People prefer poetry.

 

I know we all have "the reader's voice" in our heads as our eyeballs tracked the writing. But it seems to me that alliteration is a better device when the writing is going to be read aloud, as in a speech, and a less valuable tool when it's simply to be read silently.

(UPChip beat me to it, and I'm too lazy to hold down my delete key.)

Obvious? Okay, I'll balance with something unrelated:

Recall an old radio newsman who got his ass in a wringer when he reported on a house fire that took the lives of a couple of kids. He intro'ed it with "Two tots toasted!"

Think the result was: Freakin' fool fired.

 

Warm windy weather wows woman.....

 

Clap-catching creep creates chaos....

 

This is wrong? Never!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Call me Smitty. That’s what everybody else called me—the ballplayers, the bankers, the bareback riders, the baritones, the bartenders, the bastards, the best-selling writers (excepting Hem, who dubbed me Frederico), the bicyclists, the big game hunters (Hem the exception again), the billiards champs, the bishops, the blacklisted (myself included), the black marketeers, the blonds, the bloodsuckers, the bluebloods, the bookies, the Bolsheviks (some of my best friends, Mr. Chairman—what of it!), the bombardiers, the bootblacks, the bootlicks, the bosses, the boxers, the Brahmins, the brass hats, the British (Sir Smitty as of ‘36), the broads, the broadcasters, the broncobusters, the brunettes, the black bucks down in Barbados (Meestah Smitty), the Buddhist monks in Burma, one Bulkington, the bullfighters, the bullthrowers, the burlesque comics and the burlesque stars, the bushmen, the bums, and the butlers. And that’s only the letter B, fans, only one of the Big Twenty-Six!

-- Philip Roth
"The Great American Novel," p. 1

 

He missed the bitches....just sayin' ;D

 

This is my answer as well.