CHAPTER 8: CLEAR AND EMPHATIC SENTENCES
CHAPTER 8
Clear and Emphatic Sentences
Technical
Report writing
Table of Contents
Principles of clear sentences:
Affirmative Sentences as Clear Sentences:
b.
Exceptional Use of ‘Do’ or ‘Did’:
Clear Sentences:
Generally Clear Sentences means sentences easy to read and
understand. Sentences are made clear by writing them in Verbal style instead of
Noun style.Clear Sentences are more effective than others because they have
strong verbs that are easy to understand.
To make Clear Sentence:
u Read
your essay or paragraph and look for noun endings like –ion,
-ance/-ence,-ment. Change that nouns to a verb by removing these
prefixes.
e.g.
Their discussion was about a tax cut.
(Noun style)
They discussed a tax cut. (Verbal
style)
u Look
for the forms of verb “be”( is, are, was, were) as the sentence verb and remove
them.
And change noun to a verb.
e.g.
The medicine will have a soothing
effect on patient. (Noun style)
The medicine will soothe the patient.
(Verbal style)
u If
there are more than one prepositions in a sentence then the sentence is
probably in Noun style, so change it to Verbal style.
e.g.
There was precision in their
preparation of the data. (Noun style)
They prepared the data precisely.
(Verbal style)
Note: By using one of these strategies and
changing sentence to a Verbal style, the newer sentence becomes a clearer,
concise and more effective sentence.
To be clear and complete, a sentence
must have a subject, a verb and express a clear and complete idea.
For example:
“My homework is taking every
waking hour” is a clear
sentence. It includes a subject (My homework), a verb (is taking) and expresses
a clear or complete idea (I’m tired!).
Fragments:
Some unclear sentences are as:
My math homework
No Verb: Doesn’t
express the action
Taking every waking hour
No Subject: Doesn’t
explain who or what
Because my math homework is taking every waking hour
No clear idea:
Because of this, what?
Why we worry about
making sentence clear?
Ø To communicate
effectively
Ø To show
credibility as a writer
Ø To make writing
interesting
Principles of clear
sentences:
Some principles of writing clear sentences are:
·
Use
active voice instead of passive voice.
For
example
Active: He writes a letter
Passive: A letter is written by him
·
Use
Simple Words instead of difficult words.
Difficult Simple
Commence Begin
Terminate End
Transmit Send
·
Keep
the sentence short
Use the sentence, “Ali failed the class because of
his irresponsibility” Instead of
“The lack of
responsibility of Ali made him fail the class”.
·
Try
to avoid unnecessary phrases
This
sentence “Student in the present time have
to work to pay for college” can be written as “Today, Student have to work to pay for college.”
·
Avoid
saying the same thing twice
“The
computer is a new innovation” can be replaced as, “The computer is an
innovation.”
·
Eliminate
unnecessary words
“The
movie was kind of disturbing.”
VS
“The
movie was disturbing.”
Affirmative Sentences as Clear Sentences:
Sentences can also be made clear and
easier to understand by writing affirmative sentences instead of negative
sentences.Affirmative sentences are clearer than negative sentences. Look for
“not”, “no” or for contractions like “didn’t” in sentence, remove them and
change sentence to affirmative.
Some common Negatives and Affirmatives are following:
Negatives Affirmatives
not able unable
not certain uncertain
not different alike/similar
not many few
not possible impossible
Examples:
Negative: He did not fail the exam.
Affirmative: He passed the exam.
Negative: The committee did not consider the facts.
Affirmative: The committee ignored the facts.
Emphatic Sentences:
An empathic expression is one that is said with
emphasis and stress to indicate importance. This type of expression is
used to show you have strong feelings about what you are saying. Often
emphatic expressions that are written have an exclamation point (!) at the end
of the sentence. While spoken emphatic phrases have stress on the word that is
used to emphasize or intensify your feelings.
Emphatic
sentences can be used in expressing opinions, disagreeing, making strong
suggestions, expressing annoyance, etc.Any sentence can be made emphatic by
emphasizing on a particular subject, object or verb.There are a number of ways
to add emphasis to your sentences in English.
Creating
an emphatic expression involves adding an adverb intensifier to existing
sentence or expression to make feelings even stronger. In an emphatic
phrase the adverb intensifier is always added before the verb. The most
common emphatic intensifiers in English are “really” and “very much.
I
reallydon't believe him.
He
literallywrecked his mother's car.
She
simplyignored me.
I
love my mother very much.
They're
going to be late, for sure.
"In spoken English, words
can be emphasized by being pronounced
with a heavier stress than usual. This type of emphasis is usually indicated
in written Englishbymeansofitalics orunderlining."
"Emphatic statements are often used in conversation; for instance, when
one speaker is contradicting another." e.g. "I don't believe he works
very hard." "Yes, he does
work hard."
Forms of Emphatic sentences:
These forms are used to emphasize a statement.
a.
Cleft Sentences
b.
Exceptional Use of do or
did
a. Cleft Sentences:
Cleft means divided. In a cleft sentence, information
which could be given in one clause is divided into two parts, each with its own
verb.This way give extra emphasis to part of the sentence.
Three are two types of cleft sentences are used to
emphasize a sentence:
1.
It-Cleft Sentences
2.
What-Cleft Sentences
1. It-Cleft sentences:
Sentences
introduced by ‘It is’ or ‘It was’ are often used to emphasize a
specific subject or object. The introductory clause is then followed by a
relative pronoun.
The pattern
of It-Cleft sentences is: It + be + highlighted word/phrase + that/who clause
The
highlighted word/phrase can be a subject, object, time or place.
For examples, if the sentences is, “John stole a
book from the library last week”. In this sentence the subject is ‘John’, the
object is ‘a book’, the time is ‘Last week’ and the place is ‘Library’.
Subject
as focus:
If we want to emphasis to subject then the order of
sentences will be:
It was John who/that stole a book from the
library last week.
Object
as focus:
If we want to emphasis to object then the sentences
will look like this:
It was a book that John stole from the
library last week.
Time
as focus:
In above example last week is a time, if we want to
emphasis to time then the sentences will be:
It was last week that john stole a book from
the library.
Place
as focus:
If we want to emphasis to place then thearrangment
sentences will be:
It was from the library that John stole a
book last week.
Some more examples are:
It was I who received the promotion.
It is the awful weather that drives him crazy.
2. What Cleft Sentences:
Sentences
introduced by a clause beginning with ‘What’ are also used to emphasize a
specific subject or object. The clause introduced by ‘What’ is employed as the
subject of the sentence is followed by the verb ‘to be’.
Examples:
What we need is a good long shower.
What he thinks isn’t necessarily true.
Pattern:
The
pattern of what-cleft sentences depends on the word/statement which is to be
emphasized.For example there will be a different pattern to focus on a
word/phrase, to focus on an action and to focus on a whole sentence.
For
example if we want to focus on a word/phrase the pattern of what cleft
sentences will be:
What-clause
+ be + highlighted word/phrase
Example:What I ignore about him ishis rudeness.
If we
want to focus on an action then this pattern will be used:
What +
subject + do + be + infinitive clause
Example:WhatJohndid
yesterday wassteal a book from the library.
To
focus on a whole sentence, the
pattern of what-cleft sentence will be:
What-happens
+ be + clause
Example:What happensiswe always end up having a row.
There
are someother cleft sentences which does not follow the pattern of it or what
cleft sentences. Here is an example of these type of cleft sentences
The person who told me about it was Mike.
All I want is a cup of tea.
The place where he went for some business is
Turkey.
b. Exceptional Use of ‘Do’ or
‘Did’:
We
have probably learned that the auxiliary verbs ‘do’ and ‘did’ are not used in
positive sentences – for example: He
went to the store. NOT He did go to the store. However, in order to
emphasize something we feel strongly these auxiliary verbs can be used as an
exception to the rule.Emphatic forms
sometimes called the emphatic tenses or
emphatic mood,
are made with the auxiliary verb do
in the present or past tense + the base form of the verb.
The
present emphatic tense is formed by adding the basic present form of the
verb to the present tense of the verb to do(do or does).
The
past emphatic tense is formed by adding the basic present form of the
verb to the past tense of the verb to do(did).
Present emphatic:
Does he run fast?
He
does run fast.
He
does not run slowly.
Past emphatic:
He did come to work today.
Didn't
he stay home?
He
did not stay home today.
Examples:
No that’s not true. John did speak to Mary.
I do believe that you should think twice about this
situation.
Note
this form is often used to express something contrary to what another person
believes.
Adding emphasis by stressing the auxiliary:
When
we want to add emphasis to a verb, we often stress the auxiliary (say it
louder), shown here by underlining. We do this especially
when we want to correct what somebody thinks, or contrast it with something
else - (contrastive emphasis).
·
Continuous - Why aren't you going to the party?
·
- But I am going to the party!
·
- I can't go to this one, but I am going to the
one next week.
·
Perfect - You
haven't tidied your room!
·
- I have tidied it! I did it this morning.
·
- I know, but I have put my clothes away.
·
Modal - Is
it because you can't dance?
·
- But I can dance! Just look!
·
- I can't dance the pasodoble, but I can dance
the tango.
Note about contractions - when using these emphatic forms we don't use
contractions in positive forms, even when speaking informally.
Examples of Emphatic
sentences:
Some more examples of emphatic sentences are:
I do
take medicine for an allergy."(Present emphatic tense)
I did take
medicine for an allergy. (Past emphatic)
I will
take allergy medicine. (Future emphatic)
Labels: Technical and Business Writing
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home