IN the previous two columns we took up the use of the passive voice and of cleft sentences to draw attention to a particular aspect of the sentence that we want to emphasize. We saw that these ...

Sometimes we want to make it clear which part of a sentence is the most important to us. We can do this by changing the sentence structure and using 'what' in something called 'cleft sentences'. They ...

One of the pleasures of writing is being able to share not only information and ideas, but also one's feelings. But those are luxuries compared to, for instance, doing office memos or straight news ...

Adding emphasis: 'what' cleft sentences. Sometimes there's a particular part of a sentence that you really want to stress. It might be because it's new information or because it's the most interesting ...