When you speak, you achieve emphasis by raising your voice or stressing an important word or phrase. And much of the writing you see—in advertisements, on Web sites, in magazines—gains emphasis in similar fashion, with color or bold type, for instance. Even though academic writing can’t always rely on such graphic devices, writers use other techniques to emphasize parts of their sentences.

Using closing and opening positions for emphasis

When you read a sentence, you usually remember the ending. This part of the sentence moves the writing forward by providing new information, as in the following example:

Employers today expect college graduates to have excellent writing skills.

A less emphatic but still important position in a sentence is the opening, which often connects the new sentence with what has come before.

Today’s employers want a college-educated workforce that can communicate well. Excellent writing skills are high on the list of qualifications.

If you place relatively unimportant information in the memorable closing position of a sentence, you may undercut what you want to emphasize or give more emphasis to the closing words than you intend.

Moving $500,000 to the end of the sentence emphasizes the amount.

Using climactic order

Presenting ideas in climactic order means arranging them in order of increasing importance or drama so that your writing builds to a climax. By saving its most dramatic item for last, a sentence can make its point more forcefully.

After they’ve finished with the pantry, the medicine cabinet, and the attic, [neat people] will throw out the red geranium (too many leaves), sell the dog (too many fleas), and send the children off to boarding school (too many scuffmarks on the hardwood floors).

—SUSANNE BRITT, “Neat People vs. Sloppy People”

The original version of the preceding sentence fails to achieve strong emphasis; the editing provides climactic order.