Word rage

In the spirit of crying about things I saw years ago, here's a story about the incorrect use of the word alliterative.

Now, let's preface this with as unpretentious definition of alliteration as possible. First, alliteration happens when two or more words begin with the same consonant sounds. Not letters. Sounds. Also, consonant-only. 'Kay? 'Kay.

Anyway, this story involves Jeopardy! which is part of the reason why it's so upsetting, but here goes. Once upon a time, I was watching Jeopardy!, and one of the answers was about "a publishing house with an alliterative name" or something, and not one of the contestants got it right. Turns out the questions was "What is Simon & Schuster?" I almost had an aneurysm. "Simon & Schuster" is not alliterative! Those words start with the same letter, obviously, but they do not start with the same consonant sound. I do not understand how anyone who's taken freshman English does not know that it is the sound, not the letter, that matters in alliteration. For example, "buen viaje" ("good trip" in Spanish) is alliterative, despite the words' beginning with different letters, because in Spanish the letter b and the letter v are pronounced exactly the same. The 's' in Simon is not the same sound as the 'sh' sound in Schuster. Gah. It's the same with all consonant blends like that. "Small skirt"? Also not alliterative. Skanky skirt? Yes.