Hello! In our last lesson, we focused on making your sentences clean and direct by cutting out redundancies and wordy phrases. You learned the essential discipline of making every word justify its existence.
Today, we'll build directly on that foundation. Now that your sentences are lean, we can focus on arranging the powerful words you've kept for maximum impact. This lesson is about a subtle but crucial aspect of prose craft: applying the principle of placing key information at the start or end of a sentence for emphasis. This skill allows you to control the rhythm of your writing and guide your reader's attention, turning a simple statement into a memorable one. For an entertainment journalist, this is how you create punchlines, deliver critical judgments, and make your descriptions resonate.
This lesson should take you about 60 minutes.
1. The Two Power Positions: Beginning vs. End
In English, not all parts of a sentence are created equal. Readers unconsciously place more importance on information at the very end and the very beginning. The middle is where information is often processed with less attention.
- The end of the sentence is the most powerful position. It's the point of final emphasis, the place for the newest, most important, or most surprising information. Think of it as the "punchline" spot.
- The beginning of the sentence is the second most powerful. It establishes the topic and sets the focus for everything that follows.
This principle is fundamental to creating prose with a strong, intentional rhythm.
[PDF] Emphasizing Main Points - Duke
This handout from Duke University's EcoTeach Center provides a clear and powerful explanation of this core principle.
Please read the following sections: Start from the beginning and read to the end of the Gettysburg Address example. Focus on the analysis of why Lincoln's original phrasing is so much more powerful than the revised version. Then, read the final example about political conventions. It's a modern, memorable illustration of building suspense and delivering the key information at the last possible moment for maximum effect.
As the handout demonstrates, a simple shift in word order can drain a sentence of its power. By placing weaker, less important information at the end, the revised Lincoln speech feels anticlimactic. Your goal is to engineer your sentences to avoid this, ensuring your key ideas land in that final, emphatic position.
2. Setting the Focus: What Is Your Sentence About?
While the end of the sentence delivers the punch, the beginning tells the reader what to focus on. In English, the grammatical subject often serves as the sentence's topic. Consciously choosing your subjects is a powerful way to control the narrative thread of your writing.
For example, if you're writing a profile on an actor, you'll likely want to keep the actor as the subject of most sentences. If you're reviewing a film, "the film" or "the script" might be your recurring subjects. This creates cohesion and keeps the reader's attention exactly where you want it.
The following video lecture by Larry McEnerney, former director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, offers a brilliant method for analyzing this.
LEADERSHIP LAB: Writing Beyond the Academy 1.23.15
This excerpt from the lecture "Writing Beyond the Academy" explains how to use sentence structure to create value for your reader by focusing on what they care about.
Please watch these two segments: First, watch this explanation of the "stress position" at the end of a sentence. This reinforces what you just read and connects it to the idea of managing your reader's cognitive process. Then, watch the core exercise from underlining subjects. McEnerney demonstrates how a writer can revise a paragraph to be about studies, the book itself, or the readers of the book, simply by changing the subjects of the sentences. Pay close attention to how this transforms the focus of the text.
The key insight here is that you, the writer, are in complete control of what your sentences are about. By deliberately placing the topic you want to emphasize in the subject position, you guide your reader's thinking from one sentence to the next.
3. The Underpinning Principles and Specific Techniques
The ideas of "end-focus" and "topic-focus" are part of a broader set of principles that linguists call "information packaging." While you don't need to be a grammarian to use them, understanding the concepts can make your choices more deliberate.
Understanding sentence structures - International School Tutors
This article from International School Tutors provides a concise overview of the key organizational principles in sentence structure.
Please read the section titled General organisational principles. This will give you the formal terms for the concepts we've been discussing: Topic-Comment: The idea that a sentence starts with a topic and then says something about it. Given-New: The tendency to place old, familiar information (given) before new, important information. End-Focus: The principle that the most important information goes at the end. End-Weight: The preference for placing long, complex phrases at the end.
With these principles in mind, let's look at a common grammatical tool used to manipulate emphasis: cleft sentences. Clefting "cleaves" (or splits) a single clause into two parts to emphasize one element.
For your work in entertainment journalism, they are perfect for making corrections, drawing contrasts, or highlighting a specific detail for dramatic effect.
CLEFT SENTENCES | advanced complex sentences in English + TEST!
This video from Arnel's Everyday English gives a very clear, practical explanation of how to form and use cleft sentences.
Watch the following sections to understand the two main types: Introduction: This segment introduces the purpose of clefts. It-Clefts: Watch this to learn the "It was [emphasis] that..." structure. Notice how it places the emphasized element near the beginning. Wh-Clefts: This part explains the "What [subject] did was [emphasis]..." structure. Notice how this places the emphasized element at the end, creating end-focus.
As the video shows, you can say the same thing but create a different effect:
- Standard: The cinematography won the Oscar.
- It-Cleft: It was the cinematography that won the Oscar. (Focuses on what won).
- Wh-Cleft: What won the Oscar was the cinematography. (Also focuses on what won, but with the classic end-of-sentence punch).
4. Practice: Controlling Emphasis
Now, let's apply these ideas. Rewrite each sentence below in two different ways to shift the emphasis as instructed. Use the techniques we've discussed (changing word order, using clefts).
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Original: The director's bold visual style elevates the otherwise conventional script.
- Rewrite 1: Emphasize the conventional script.
- Rewrite 2: Emphasize the director's bold visual style.
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Original: The streaming service cancelled the fan-favorite show after three seasons due to low viewership.
- Rewrite 1: Emphasize the fact that the show was a fan favorite.
- Rewrite 2: Emphasize the reason for cancellation: low viewership.
View suggested revisions
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Original: The director's bold visual style elevates the otherwise conventional script.
- Rewrite 1 (Emphasize script): The otherwise conventional script is elevated by the director's bold visual style. (Simple inversion to move "conventional script" to the end).
- Rewrite 2 (Emphasize style): It was the director's bold visual style that elevated the otherwise conventional script. (Using an It-cleft puts the focus right up front). Or: What elevated the otherwise conventional script was the director's bold visual style. (Using a Wh-cleft for end-focus).
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Original: The streaming service cancelled the fan-favorite show after three seasons due to low viewership.
- Rewrite 1 (Emphasize 'fan-favorite'): Despite being a fan-favorite, the show was cancelled by the streaming service after three seasons due to low viewership. (Fronting the concessive clause gives it prominence).
- Rewrite 2 (Emphasize reason): The streaming service cancelled the fan-favorite show after three seasons because of low viewership. (Simple rephrasing to isolate the key reason at the end). Or: The reason the streaming service cancelled the fan-favorite show after three seasons was low viewership. (A variation of a cleft structure).
Conclusion
You've now moved from simply cleaning your sentences to strategically arranging them. This is a significant step toward crafting prose that feels professional, polished, and purposeful.
Key Takeaways:
- The end of a sentence is the primary position of stress and is ideal for your most important new information.
- The beginning of a sentence sets the topic and grounds the reader's focus.
- You can deliberately choose subjects to create a cohesive narrative thread.
- Grammatical structures like cleft sentences are powerful tools for manipulating emphasis.
In our next module, "Word Choice and Precision," we will dive even deeper into the building blocks of your sentences. We'll begin by learning to distinguish between general and specific word choices and select the more vivid option. Now that you know where to place your most important ideas, we'll work on making sure the words you use are as sharp and impactful as possible.