By experimenting with certain techniques, usually involving some element of surprise, you can draw attention to ideas that deserve special emphasis. Use such techniques sparingly, however, or they will lose their punch. The writer who tries to emphasize everything ends up emphasizing nothing.
Emphatic sentence endings
You can highlight an idea simply by withholding it until the end of a sentence. The technique works something like a punch line. In the following example, the sentence’s meaning is not revealed until its very last word.
The only completely consistent people are the dead.
—Aldous Huxley
Emphatic parallel structure
Parallel grammatical structure draws special attention to paired ideas or to items in a series. When parallel ideas are paired, the emphasis falls on words that underscore comparisons or contrasts, especially when they occur at the end of a phrase or clause.
We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.
—Reubin Askew
In a parallel series, the emphasis falls at the end, so it is generally best to end with the most dramatic or climactic item in the series.
Sister Charity enjoyed passing out writing punishments: translate the Ten Commandments into Latin, type a thousand-word essay on good manners, copy the New Testament with a quill pen.
—Marie Visosky, student
Ending a sentence with three items in parallel, as this sentence does, creates a rhythmic, emphatic effect.
Emphatic short sentences
Too many short sentences in a row will fast become monotonous, but an occasional short sentence, when played off against longer sentences in the same passage, will draw attention to an idea.
The great secret, known to internists and learned early in marriage by internists’ wives [or husbands], but still hidden from the general public, is that most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning.
—Lewis Thomas
Exercises:
Identifying coordination
Identifying subordination
Identifying sentence emphasis 1
Identifying sentence emphasis 2
Combining choppy sentences
Using coordination and subordination 1
Using coordination and subordination 2
Using coordination and subordination 3