• It is used primarily because describing sounds with words can be difficult for an author. For example, if an author is writing a story and someone fires a gun, they are faced with the problem of explaining to the reader how the gun sounded. An author could choose to say the gun sounded loud, but that does nothing to give the reader a better picture of the action. Instead, the author could use simile or metaphors like, “the gun sounded like thunder,” to describe the action, but for more variety and for a more efficient way to provide an image, he could make use of onomatopoeia.