Flow
To enable flow in your prose, follow these two principles:
In other words, always move from old to new information. Consider how attention to flow and cohesion improves the following sentences:
| ORIGINAL The number of dead in the Civil War exceeded all other wars in American history. A reason for the lingering animosity between North and South today is the memory of this terrible carnage. |
| REVISION Of all the wars in American history, none has exceeded the Civil War in the number of dead. The memory of this terrible carnage is one reason for the lingering animosity between North and South today. |
However, be careful not to apply the old-to-new rule to the detriment of paragraph cohesiveness. Consider the paragraph below, which undeniably enacts the old to new pattern.
| Saner, Wisconsin, is the snowmobile capital of the world. The buzzing of snowmobile engines fills the air, and their tank-like tracks crisscross the snow. The snow reminds me of Mom's mashed potatoes, covered with furrows I would draw with my fork. Mom's mashed potatoes usually made me sick, that's why I play with them. I like to make a hole in the middle of the potatoes and fill it with melted butter. This behavior has been the subject of long chats between me and my analyst. |
This paragraph lacks any cohesion because the topic has shifted from sentence to sentence. You need to be sure that when you write you create paragraphs that are both coherent and cohesive.
Emphasis
The natural stress of a sentence lies at the end. Readers assign special emphasis to the words they hear under this final stress, at the end of a sentence, and what they hear emphasized, they take to be rhetorically significant.
Always look at the last few words of your sentence to see whether you have in fact ended them on the words and phrases that deserve the most rhetorical emphasis. Consider also the nature of the words that you use: prepositions are relational words, therefore holding little significance in themselves; adjectives and adverbs are heavier than prepositions, but lighter than nouns; the heaviest words of all are nominalizations.
Below is advice on how to manage endings and emphasis in your own writing:
Four Ways
to Revise your prose for emphasis
1. Trim the end.
| ORIGINAL: Sociobiologists now make the provocative claim that our genes control our social behavior in the way we act in situations we find around us every day. |
| REVISION: Sociobiologists now make the provocative claim that our genes control our social behavior. |
2. Shift peripheral ideas to the left. In particular, avoid ending with metadiscourse.
| ORIGINAL: Julia Roberts's enduring popularity as an actress has more to do with image than talent, in my opinion. |
| REVISION: In my opinion, Julia Roberts's enduring popularity as an actress has more to do with image than talent. |
3. Shift important ideas to the right.
| ORIGINAL: Whether or not an actor wins an Emmy is more important than what she is wearing to the award ceremony. |
| REVISION: More important that what an actor is wearing to the award ceremony is whether or not she wins an Emmy. |
4. Move important ideas out of subordinate clauses and into independent clauses.
|
ORIGINAL: Halle Berry was in Monster's Ball, for which performance she received an Oscar. |
| REVISION: Halle Berry received an Oscar for her performance in Monster's Ball. |
Nine syntactic devices for conveying emphasis
Passives. The passive voice exists to let you move elements around in a sentence so that you can stress the words or ideas that are most important for you. Use of the passive lets you closely connect ideas and enable flow in the sentence.
"There
is ..." construction. Use "there is" or "there
are" only deliberately to indicate stress.
| Original: Forty-seven shopping days are left before Christmas. |
| Emphasizing
the number of days: There are forty-seven shopping days left before Christmas. |
Inverted sentence.
This devise reverses the normal subject-verb order, placing the subject at the
end where it receives unusual emphasis.
| Original: Female self-image problems have their root in teen magazine. |
| Revision: In teen magazines lie the roots of female self-image problems. |
What-shift.
It allows you to send a signal to your reader that the element at the end of
the sentence (after the what clause) is the most important: this is a type of
inverted sentence.
| Original: The strong, I'll-kick-you-in-your-face female protagonists are the most appealing part to me of the recent girl-power shows. |
| With emphasis: What appeals to me most about recent girl-power shows are their strong, I'll-kick-you-in-your-face female protagonists. |
It-shift.
This device simultaneously singles out a topic and throws added weight on the
stress.
| Original: Stavros killed Chloe and framed Stephan for the murder. |
| Emphasizing
that Stavros, not someone else, did this: It was Stavros who killed Chloe and framed Stephan for the murder. |
Not only X,
but Y (as well). The "but" emphasizes the last element of the
pair.
| Original: For Monday's class, students had to revise their fourth essay and fill out a self-evaluation form. |
| With emphasis: For Monday's class, students not only had to revise their fourth essay, but they also had to fill out a self-evaluation form. |
Parallel Structures. Parallel grammatical structures call attention to the paired ideas or elements in a series. Emphasis tends to fall at the end, so it is best to organize elements from least to most dramatic/important.
Example 1: Parents must learn that talking to their kids is not nearly as effective as talking with them.
Example 2: In the social Darwinist world of Survivor, there seems to be one recurrent code of conduct: lay low, work hard, make nice, form alliances, identify your threats, go in for the kill.