Mastering the Craft of Writing: How to Write With Clarity, Emphasis, and Style by Stephen Wilbers

Author:Stephen Wilbers [Wilbers, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
Published: 2014-03-31T14:00:00+00:00

A FURTHER THOUGHT: HIT THOSE NATURAL STRESS POINTS FOR EMPHASIS

Word arrangement is a powerful technique of composition, yet few writers are taught its importance.

Ask any college student where the natural stress points fall in a sentence, and you’ll get a puzzled look. Ask anyone in your office, and you’ll get a response like “Stress points? I feel stress every time I write.”

Beginnings and endings count more than middles. It’s a principle as simple as it is broad. Whether the first and last words in a sentence, the first and last sentences in a paragraph, or the first and last paragraphs in a document, what comes first and last has more impact than what occurs in the middle.

As an illustration of opening emphasis, move finally to the beginning of this sentence: “We’re finally here.” Can you see how “Finally, we’re here” is more emphatic?

As another illustration, try to move at long last to another position in this sentence: “At long last, we’re here.”

“We’re here at long last” and “We’re at long last here” don’t sound quite right. The emphatic phrase goes naturally in only one place: in the opening position of prominence: “At long last, we’re here.”

In paragraphs and documents, the opening and closing emphasis is nearly equal. In sentences, however, the last words have greater emphasis. The reason? Pauses create emphasis, and the period, as the British call it, is a “full stop.”

For a musical analogy, think of periods—along with question marks, exclamation marks, colons, and dashes—as whole-note rests, semicolons as half-note rests, and commas as quarter-note rests. The longer the rest, the greater the emphasis.

Consider this sentence: “The evidence is clear that we’ll be bankrupt by the end of the year if we don’t reduce costs and increase revenue.”

To emphasize the threat of bankruptcy, move bankrupt to the end: “The evidence is clear that if we don’t reduce costs and increase revenue, by the end of the year we’ll be bankrupt.”

To further shape the sentence, insert a whole-note rest (either a colon or a dash) after the first clause: “The evidence is clear: If we don’t reduce costs and increase revenue, by the end of the year we’ll be bankrupt.”

It’s not just what you say; it’s also how you say it. And it’s not just what words you use; it’s also where you place them. Word placement and pauses are powerful techniques of emphasis.

Here’s another example: “Unfortunately, their decisions are based more on their administrative concerns than on the educational merits of our programs.”

To give the important words more emphasis, move educational merits to the end of the sentence: “Unfortunately, their decisions are based more on their administrative concerns than on our programs’ educational merits.”

To continue the musical analogy, think of the closing words in the sentence as the downbeat. Make sure words that appear there are the ones you want to stress.

One more example. Reorder the words in the following sentence as you think Robert Frost phrased it: “A vertical expression of a horizontal desire is dancing.”

Here’s how the poet gave it to us: “Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.

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