7 Steps to Better Writing - Charles Maxwell 2020

Emphasize what is important
Step 6 – Revise

Good writing uses the following techniques to emphasize what is important:

· Location in a document — what comes first and what comes last naturally receive emphasis — therefore, place what is important at the beginning and/or at the end of documents, sections, paragraphs, lists, and sentences

· Repetition — summarize key concepts in the introduction, discuss them in the document body, illustrate them with tables and figures, and summarize them again in the conclusion

· Allocation of space — provide more words, sentences, or paragraphs to discuss what is most important

· Details — supply more details to important points

· Contrast — cause one idea to standout by including it with a group of contrasting ideas that are similar to one another but different from the idea to be emphasized

· Climatic arrangement — write in such a way to build suspense and introduce the most important idea as a climax

· Capitalization, bolding, italics, underlining, larger font size, different font style, highlighting, and color—use these mechanical elements to draw attention to the important points

In any sentence, the most emphatic positions are the main independent clause, the subject of the independent clause, and the end of the sentence.