CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Emphasizing Main Ideas
Effective writing uses coordination, subordination, and parallelism to help readers understand the relationship of ideas and details. It also emphasizes important information by making it readily apparent to readers.
When you arrange information carefully in a sentence, you can emphasize you most important ideas and can put less emphasis on less important ideas. In arranging ideas within sentences for emphasis, you should keep two principles in mind. First, the beginnings and endings of sentences are the most emphatic positions, and endings are generally more emphatic than beginnings. Second, a parallel series of words, phrases, or clauses will be most emphatic if the elements appear in order of increasing importance.
In most declarative sentences, the subject comes first, followed by a predicate that makes a statement about the subject. This form gives readers the feeling that the subject and the statement made about the subject are of equal importance. In very simple sentences, this balance between subject and predicate is easy to see and feel.
Mark is swimming.
[The subject, Mark, and the verb phrase, is swimming, are equally important to the sense of the sentence.]
More complicated sentences can also show balance.
The vast internal migration of the early 1940’s has continued, in a somewhat lower key, in the postwar period.
William Manchester
[A subject is set down, and a statement is made about it; readers do not feel any special emphasis on either the subject or the predicate. They both seem equally important.]
But sometimes the balance of a sentence may tip heavily to one side or another. In the following example, an enormous weight of emphasis is placed on the subject, but the predicate is so light that it is disappointing.
The battered trees, bending in the screaming winds of the storm, their branches ripped away by the gale, their leaves blowing like a green haze through the driving rain, were diseased anyway.
[The subject is full of drama and movement, but the predicate is limp and disappointing.]
If you are going to place dramatic elements at the beginning of a sentence, you must have a predicate strong enough to carry such a strong subject.
The sight of the bodies in the water, the strain of the long trip in from the transport ship, and now the ominous nearness of the flat sands and the dunes of Utah Beach
Cornelius Ryan
a Learn to emphasize your main point by using a periodic sentence.
A periodic sentence is a sentence that has a strong word or phrase at the end, just before the period. The complete meaning is apparent only when you come to the last few words of the sentence. Study the following periodic sentences:
In the Mason jars stacked up dusty and fly-specked on the side shelves, in the broken-webbed snowshoes hung there, the heap of rusty hinged traps waiting this long to be oiled and set to catch something in the night, was the visible imprint of the past we were rooted in.
Joan Chase
If asked to name the central quality in Faulkner’s work, one is likely to give the quick answer “Imagination.”
Malcolm Cowley
It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan’s annual dance.
James Joyce
It was the kind of party where everyone knew everyone else, except no one knew men.
Linda Bird Francke
Sometimes a periodic sentence ends with a striking thought rather than with a striking word.
The original Hopalong Cassidy was created by Clarence E. Mulford, a Brooklyn marriage-license clerk who at the time had never even seen the West.
James Horwitz
[The striking thought occurs at the end of the sentence, where we learn that the hero of so many books and movies about the West was created by a man who had never been there.]
When you have several facts that you want to convey in a sentence, it is nearly always a good idea to put the more important ones toward the end to give a sense of building to a climax that will be memorable.
Loose: John Muir, the naturalist who was more responsible than any other single person for establishing Yosemite National Park
[The most important fact in this sentence is not John Muir’s long and tangled beard but his part in establishing Yosemite National Park
Revised: John Muir, the naturalist who took long, solitary walks and let his beard grow long and tangled, was more responsible than any other single person for establishing Yosemite National Park
Often when you write your first draft, you may simply jot down a list of events or facts that you can combine to make periodic sentences in later drafts.
First Draft: At last, the hang glider settled softly and safely to earth. Its daring pilot had lunged into space from the cliff above. The cliff was three thousand feet above the valley floor. He knew that if he touched the face of the cliff, he would plunge to his death. He caught the morning winds and drifted down.
[The most important fact in these sentences is that the hang-glider pilot landed safely after a daring flight. Here is a revision to make a periodic sentence.]
Revised: The daring pilot of the hang glider lunged into space from the cliff three thousand feet above the valley floor, caught the morning winds, and drifted down, knowing that to touch the face of the cliff was to plunge to his death, at last coming softly and safely to earth.
b Do not undermine your sentences by ending them with weak or parenthetical expressions.
Weak: Young people in 1946 and 1947 turned from the horrors of World War II to a love affair with the jukebox, however.
Better: Young people in 1946 and 1947, however, turned from the horrors of World War II to a love affair with the jukebox.
[The reader learns of the contradiction early in the sentence when “however” is placed after the subject.]
Weak: The huge demonstrations in Washington
Better: Nevertheless, the huge demonstrations in Washington
[“Nevertheless” at the beginning of the sentence states a contradiction with something that has been said before and allows the sentence to end on a strong note.]
Exercise 1. Rewrite the sentences below to make periodic sentences. If necessary, delete some words and phrases or invent others that capture the central idea.
1. Adlai Stevenson, laboring against the awesome power of Dwight Eisenhower’s smile, lost the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956, as everyone knows.
2. Fiction writers do not often talk very well to interviewers about how they write, so Malcolm Cowley says.
3. The inspector found the body in the kitchen. When she had arrived on the scene, the house was locked and silent. She had the officers break down the door.
4. The gravity of the sun did bend lightwaves passing nearby from distant stars, as experiments during a solar eclipse proved.
c Write cumulative sentences by adding modifying elements to the predicates of independent or dependent clauses.
In a cumulative sentence, several free modifiers or absolutes are added to the end of the predicate thus bringing new layers of meaning to the basic assertion of the clause. A cumulative sentence completes its main statement (topic and comment) and then explains, amplifies, or illustrates it. The primary emphasis lies on the opening main clause, but the sentence continues to provide new information. In a way, the cumulative sentence is the opposite of the periodic sentence.
Free modifiers follow the word they modify, and quite often they are participial phrases that follow a verb and modify the subject.
Jim staggered through the doorway, his pants torn, his shirt ripped open, his cheeks greasy and bleeding.
Most of the Great American Desert
Edward Abbey
The ship finally reached port under half steam and spewing black smoke, with its hull battered and a hole punched in its bow.
The motorcycle spun out of control, leaving the highway, plunging down the ravine, crashing through a fence, coming to rest at last on its side.
The ocean beat against the shore in long swells, roaring above the sound of the wind, threatening the tiny houses, slamming against the great rocks on the beach.
Absolutes include both a noun and a participle. They may be placed at the end of a sentence to add texture and meaning to the whole.
He crossed the finish line in record time, his lungs nearly bursting with his effort.
The barn burned, the flames rising two hundred feet into the night sky.
Sometimes an absolute uses a noun with an unwritten or understood participle of the verb “to be.”
She walked into the room, her face bright and cheerful.
[The sentence may be understood in this way: “She walked into the room, her face being bright and cheerful.”]
A cumulative sentence may use absolutes or free modifiers or both. In contrast, a noncumulative sentence completes its thought with a subject complement, a direct object, or an adverb or adverbial phrase.
The house stood silently on the hill.
But the sentence can be revised so that it completes its thought with absolutes and free modifiers:
The house stood silently on the hill, baking in the hot sunshine, its broken windows gaping open to the ragged fields, its roof collapsing, its rotting doors hanging open, its glory departed.
[The participial phrase “baking in the hot sunshine” is a free modifier modifying “house”; the phrases “its broken windows gaping open to the ragged fields,” “its roof collapsing,” “its rotting doors hanging open,” and “its glory departed” are all absolutes.]
Study the following cumulative sentences, and see how elements added to the end of the predicate help accumulate force.
He emptied them thoroughly, unhurried, his face completely cold, masklike almost.
William Faulkner
Another characteristic was that once a Veragua had caught and gored a man or a horse he would not leave him but would attack again and again, seeming to want to destroy his victim entirely.
Ernest Hemingway
[The participial phrase “seeming to want to destroy his victim entirely” is a free modifier, describing a breed of bull called a Veragua that is the subject of the sentence. The modifying phrase comes at the end of the sentence.]
Exercise 2. Combine the following sentences to make cumulative sentences.
SAMPLE He sat at the typewriter. His teacup was at his left. The wind was blowing outside. The clock was ticking over the fireplace.
ANSWER He sat at the typewriter, his teacup was at his left, the clock ticking over the fireplace, the wind blowing outside.
1. She studied the map of the block. She was thinking of the fine old buildings that would have to be torn down. She was thinking of her own creation that would take their place. Her ideas were rushing in her head like a flood.
2. He got down from the train and looked around. He saw the courthouse. He saw the city square. It was vacant at this hour of the morning.
3. She saw him. He was sitting in a rocking chair. He was holding a large, black book. It was his family Bible.
d Give emphasis to the actor or agent in your sentences by using the active rather than the passive voice.
In the active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action of the verb; in the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is acted upon. The passive voice is thus indirect because it obscures or removes the actor. The active voice is more direct, vigorous, and emphatic. Furthermore, all sentences turn on their verbs, which gives sentences their motion, pushing them along. And active verbs push harder than passive ones.
Weak Passive: His decision not to run for reelection to the presidency in 1968 was announced on television on March 31 of that year by Lyndon Johnson.
Stronger Active: On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced on television that he would not run for reelection in the fall.
Weak Passive: For energy conservation it is urged that all lights be turned off when not being used. [Who is urging? Who is to turn off the lights?]
Stronger Active: To save energy, students should turn off all lights they are not using.
Weak Passive: The new outpatient clinic was opened by the hospital administration so that costs of non-emergency medical care would be reduced.
Stronger Active: The hospital administration opened the new outpatient clinic to reduce the costs of non-emergency medical care.
You can use the passive to build a dramatic periodic sentence in which the agent remains a surprise until the end. But such a sentence is valuable only if the surprise is worthwhile, as it may be in a humorous sentence:
The burglar alarms were set clanging, the police were brought running with drawn guns, and the customers in the bank were sent flying out the doors by a signal set off in the vault by a lost puppy.
You cannot use such a device often, and you must be sure that the surprise is real. Readers are likely to feel annoyed by writers who try to surprise them with the obvious:
Macbeth was written by the most brilliant of English playwrights, the Sweet Swan of Avon , the man whose work millions have known and loved, William Shakespeare.
As a rule, use the passive only when the actor or agent in the sentence is much less important to your statement than the recipient of the action or the action itself.
Estes Kefauver was elected to the Senate in 1948.
She was taken to the hospital last night.
e Occasionally give emphasis by repeating key words or phrases in several consecutive clauses or sentences.
Although careless repetition results in weak and wordy sentences, judicious repetition of key words and phrases can be an effective means of emphasis. Such repetition often combines with parallelism. It may occur in a series of sentences within a paragraph. Or it may occur in a series of words, phrases, or clauses within a sentence.
We have the tools, all the tools—we are suffocating in tools—but we cannot find the actual wood to work or even the actual hand to work it.
Archibald MacLeish
Government comes from below, not above; government comes from men, not from kings or lords or military masters; government looks to the source of all power in the consent of men.
Henry Steele Commager
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burdens, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy
[President Kennedy intended the word “any” to pound home his message to the American people and the world.]
Such repetition is effective when only used occasionally to make an emphatic argument against important doubts. It can easily be overdone.
f Give special emphasis to ideas by writing a very short sentence to follow several long ones.
The real objection to capital punishment doesn’t lie against the actual extermination of the condemned, but against our brutal American habit of putting it off so long. After all, every one of us must die soon or late, and a murderer, it must be assumed, is one who makes that sad fact the cornerstone of his metaphysic. But it is one thing to die, and quite another thing to lie for long months and even years under the shadow of death. No sane man would choose such a finish.
H.L. Mencken
Most of the reading which is praised for itself is neither literary nor intellectual. It is narcotic.
Donald Hall
Exercise 3. Rewrite the following sentences to give emphasis to the elements you think are most important or most dramatic. You may change or delete words and phrases as long as you keep the central idea. Try to find several ways of dealing with each sentence.
1. The college library was locked up by the head librarian, G.W. Cranshaw, who said he got tired of seeing all those careless and sweaty students handling the books.
2. How strongly we believe in something, especially when it is something we think we ought to believe and maybe don’t but won’t admit it, and somebody comes and asks us if we believe it, is not measured well by statistics.
3. Now swimmers can buy little floats with bright colors on the top and clamps on the bottom under the water, and they can swim out to sea and take off their bathing suits and clamp them with the clamps and go skinny dipping if they want to.
4. An artificial climate has been made by central air-conditioning and central heating, and we are used to it now and cannot think of being without it, although we may have to get along without it someday.
5. Only a few fiction writers have also been good poets because the crafts are different, and not many people can manage both, although Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and James Joyce have all done their best.
Няма коментари:
Публикуване на коментар