Assonance Exercises: Fill & Download for Free

From what I can see, Alfani is a cheap shot at establishing a wannabe Italian-sounding clothing brand.It is just an exercise in branding. The quality could be good or not, but I mean - the brand has no kind of cultural or historical heritage to communicate apart from an Italian-sounding name attached to clothing which is not Italian at all.As a note, apart from its obvious assonance with “Armani”, it reminds closely of “Alfano” - Angelino Alfano, Italian politician and Minister, recently in the news because of a scandal about his brother getting hired in the State-owned Post Office service as a Director (with a 200k Euro salary and … ehm … scant qualifications).So, also a poor choice as a reference, too. I suggest Macy’s marketing team to do some more research next time.

Read. Read more! Read interactively — always with a pencil in hand (do not read on the internet). Look up everyone nominated for a National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize in poetry last year and get and read one of those books. Closely. Pay attention! Mark the use of rhythm. Assonance, consonance. Hyperbole. Whatever. Note everything and ask “is that a thing?” Look it up. It probably is.Try this exercise: take a poem, copy it out in your journal/commonplace book (you don’t have one? Start one now!) Insert new lines in-between all the lines you see. Then erase the old lines.Every day, copy out a new (previously existing. By someone. Found anywhere) poem by longhand into your commonplace book.Try this exercise: take a poem, underline all the similes, all the metaphors. Take a metaphor and have it symbolize something else. Transpose the similes. Put them back in the poem. Put them into a new poem.Every day, consider how someone else might experience the feeling you are having right now.Try this exercise: close your eyes. Open them. Write down the first thing you see. Describe it so that someone who has never seen this object, has no idea what this object is for, what cultural context it exists in, what kind of economic structure is necessary to produce this object, understands this object fully. Describe in complete detail one of the people involved in making or using this object. What do they look like? What are they wearing? How old are they? What do they smell like? Why? Where is this person going? What will they do when they get there? Write all of that down.Every day, hold your fingers to your face and say a few words out loud, feeling the shape of the sounds in your hands.Try this exercise: close your eyes. Write down what you hear. Describe it as if you had never heard this before and were trying to understand what it could possibly be. What does it resemble? Why? Duration, pitch? Possible source?Every day, spend ten minutes with the internet turned off.Try this exercise: write down a word. Write a synonym for that word. Write a synonym for that word. Stop when you reach an antonym for the word you started with.ETC.!!!!

First, for general tips on becoming a better writer, see How do I become a better writer?.But this question asks something more specific -- eloquence of a piece of writing is largely determined by the language of that piece. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloquence for a somewhat more formal rhetorical definition of this term.)In particular, eloquent writing usually has a few properties:It is deeply persuasive. This doesn't necessarily mean that it is a an argumentative piece -- simple narration or description in fiction can be "persuasive" too, in the sense that it pulls you into a world and convinces you that that place is real and immediate. Persuasiveness is a function of many things (including issues discussed below), but specificity can often make or break a piece of writing's ability to convince. One exercise to hone this skill is to start with a very general sentence ("The cow jumped over the moon.") and progressively develop details around each component until the sentence in aggregate is much more specific ("The mottled cow leapt with joyous anticipation over the pale summer moon, which floated dimly over the horizon in the pinkish glow of the setting sun."). (Please don't think that I hold up the previous sentence as a model of eloquence :-) -- it's just an exercise. In particular, making sentences longer does not inherently make them more eloquent -- just read Ernest Hemingway's work.)It is structured very carefully. Structure is always a very important property of a piece of writing, and the structure you choose can vary based on the goal (clarity, brevity, persuasion, etc.). But writing that people describe as "eloquent" often has an unusually strong sense of rising action, climax, and denouement, in the way that a story might (and in the way that a Quora answer, which typically optimizes for straightforwardness, does not) -- this is the reason that people talk about eloquent writing as something that "flows." To practice this type of structure, it's useful to think about how to withhold information to hold the reader in suspense, how to use contradiction and reinforcement to keep the reader engaged, and how to choose the right moment to deploy the strongest words, the most compelling images, or the deepest catharsis. The connections and transitions between consecutive ideas is also extremely important -- ideas should follow each other in a way that leaves the reader feeling a sense of inevitability as he works his way through the argument or narrative.When read aloud, it leaves an impression beyond what's on the page. This is usually because of both the rhythm of the piece and its sound (as created by such devices as alliteration, assonance, and consonance). Phrases like "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" from Thomas Paine's Common Sense (a favorite example in high school English classes of the impact of rhetoric on the early American sensibility) sound forceful in a way that makes them more persuasive. Varied sentence structure and repetition are also a key technique in this area. Developing the ability to write with a cadence that moves people, that feels almost like poetry, takes time -- it is best approached through reading (and listening to) the work of people who are known as great orators, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., or Abraham Lincoln. (Just check out the Gettysburg Address, one of the most eloquent pieces of writing I have ever seen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address.) Rhythm and sound are also a key reason that the work of William Shakespeare has endured for so many years as a paragon of literary excellence.It often makes effective use of literary devices, such as metaphor, imagery, allusion, symbolism, and personification. These devices can be hard to master but are very effective when used properly: just think how strong of an impression is left by Robert Frost's classic poem, "The Road Not Taken" (http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html). Learning these techniques generally requires focused study, and a classroom setting can help (writing classes, literature classes, etc.).It may use an elevated diction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diction), though it doesn't have to, and there are myriad examples of eloquent writing in both very high and very low vocabularies. My personal viewpoint is that developing a diverse vocabulary is essential to eloquent writing, because it gives a writer the power and flexibility to decide the best way to express an idea in a particular context. Developing a better vocabulary is pretty straightforward (flash cards and reading well-written publications will do it, over time), but developing the judgment to know when to say "rapturous" and when to just say "happy" takes years of trial and error.There are probably many other properties we could identify as being hallmarks of eloquent writing, and many ideas we might have on how to develop them -- would love to know what others think!