100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019

Put emphatic words at the end
Twelve ways to give your words power

Emphatic words are those words you want the reader to pay special attention to. They contain the information you are most eager to communicate. You can get that extra attention for those words by placing them at the end of the sentence.

If you want to emphasize the fact that redwood trees are tall, you might write, “Some redwoods are more than 350 feet tall.” But if you want to emphasize the fact that one of the attractions in California is the redwood trees, you would write, “Also found in California are the 350-foot redwood trees.”

If you want to emphasize the amount of money that somebody owes you, you write, “By June first please send me a check for $107.12.” If you want to emphasize the due date, you write, “Please send me a check for $107.12 by June first.” And if you want to emphasize who the check is to go to, write, “On June first the check for $107.12 should be sent to me.”

This is a lesson best learned by ear. Listen to how the impact of a sentence moves to whatever information happens to be at the end.

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him.

Ask what you can do for America, not what America can do for you.

Ask not what America can do for you; ask what you can do for America.