Emphasis techniques¶
Position in the sentence¶
Start or end of a sentence. English tends to emphasize the first and last items in a list.
Adding adjectives¶
Adding an adjective draws attention and gives “ideas” more weight semantically.
Separate a part to it’s own phrase¶
Structurally isolating an item and giving it conceptual priority.
Repetition¶
See The writes options p. 177
Focusing modifiers¶
Restrictive (only, merely)
Additive (also, too)
Scalar, magnitude (even)
Use passive voice¶
New important information: Long passive, the by phrase should introduce and emphasize new information (in the context)
What happened: Short passive, for the object and the action (should have a good reason not to provide the identity of the doer).
By whom?: Passive voice can help to emphasize the agent:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects meat for contamination.
Meat is inspected for contamination by the FDA.
The object:
Passive allows object to serve as the Theme:
The blast was caused by a canister of benzene.
Use prepositional passive + stranding¶
English allows to turn the object of a preposition into the subject of a passive sentence:
They looked at the map (active)
The map was looked at (passive, stranding preposition)
Start with a concept word or phrase:¶
Break the grammatical rules of SVO and put a word or phrase at the beginning
Barcelona—the very word evokes images of a vibrant, tumultuous, exotic city.
Topic prominence¶
Move the topic to the front.
Information package¶
Select the best information package for the context: passive, cleft, etc. See table of focus and effect of information packages.
Dummy subjects¶
With cleft or extraposition. A dummy “It is…” fronts the subject early and reduces the cognitive load.
Dynamic verbs¶
For process, spinning the wheels, “bureaucracy” use Activities. Work with goals, process with done state, analytical tone, struggle: Accomplishment. For dramatic, snap change, results: * Achievement*.
Momentum and results¶
Use a lot of “for” to show drifting, no point. To show momentum and results, try to rephrase sentences so they can pass the “in” test (Accomplishments/Achievements).
Start with verb¶
Sometimes you can begin with a verb, along with an adverb like only or first, or a negative like nowhere, not until, or never:
First came the governor, then her economic advisers.
Coordination¶
Make less important items subordinates
Verbal noun¶
The verbal noun focuses on the action itself rather than manner:
The careful selection of adjectives is essential (focus on careful)
Selecting adjectives carefully is essential (focus on selecting)
Omit elements, use gaps¶
English allows to omit elements using fronting, stranding, reduced relative clause, hollow clause, anaphora, unexpressed subject and ellipsis.
The result is a concise sentence, that only focuses on what matters most.
Unexpressed subject¶
Non-finite clauses often lack an overt subject. The more “noun-like” a verb becomes, the less it needs a subject.
It remove the “human element”, focuses on the conclusion, sounds like a definition rather than an opinion, and skips general or irrelevant subjects:
leaves only the “Hammer Blow” of the conclusion.