Tautogram

A tautogram is a text entirely composed of words beginning with the same letter of the alphabet – e.g., ‘All AWE’s admirable aims are attainable’ or ‘Colin’s car crashed, cornering carelessly’. {The word tautogram is formed from the Greek words ταὐτό (tauto) (=τὸ αὐτό, to auto), ‘the same’, and γράμμα (gramma, ‘letter’). Tautograms vary in length from a single short sentence to, exceptionally, a chapter in a book: e.g., all the words in the first chapter of Alphabetical Africa (1974), an experimental novel by the Austrian-American author Walter Abish (1931- ), begin with the letter ‘a’.

What is the relationship between tautograms and alliteration, i.e., repetition of the same consonantal sound?

• Clearly, most tautograms involve alliteration (e.g., ‘Twenty trainee teachers tried tirelessly to teach Tom trigonometry’) – but not all do: e.g., when all the words in a tautogram begin not with a consonant but with a vowel (as in ‘All AWE’s admirable aims are attainable’ or ‘Every English entrant effortlessly exhibited excellence’); or when the same initial consonant represents different sounds (as in ‘Cinderella chops carrots’).

• Even more clearly, many examples of alliteration are not tautograms: it is not necessary, for various reasons, that all the words in an alliterative passage begin with the same letter. Sometimes some of the words in the passage may not contribute at all to the alliterative effect, as with ‘is’, ‘and’, and ‘the’ in ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair,/Hover through the fog and filthy air’ (Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I Scene 1, ll. 11-12); and sometimes even when the initial letters of all the words do produce a repetition of the same sound, this sound is produced by different letters, as in ‘Karl callously killed countless cats’ (where the repeated ‘k’ sound is produced sometimes by ‘k’, sometimes by ‘c’).

• There is also a difference between our reasons, on the one hand, for using alliteration and, on the other, for constructing tautograms. Alliteration is typically used to produce an effect on the listener (or reader) - in poetry, to convey or excite an emotion, or to add vividness or intensity to a description; and in public speaking or advertising, to underline a message or make it more memorable. By contrast, tautograms are simply a jeu d’esprit: their construction is seen as an intellectual challenge and undertaken for that reason - or if for the sake of an effect on others, to elicit their admiration for the author’s wit and intelligence!

For other types of ‘constrained writing’ see Lipogram, Pangram and Rhopalic sentence.