Use The Topic Position To Announce What Your Sentence Will Explain

As we’ve said, readers expect you to announce what you’re talking about right away, as a word or phrase in the topic position of your sentence. However, many writers fail to do this when they’re explaining something complicated to their readers. Take this sentence for example—what is it about?

The exportation of a wide variety of low-priced goods into many international markets has become one of the primary reasons for the sudden expansion of China’s economy.

Most readers would agree that this sentence is talking about “China”—but this is something that’s impossible to see until the end of the sentence. This writer has arranged his moveable information in a way that doesn’t match up with the expected topic and stress positions of a sentence. Most readers won’t know what the topic of this sentence is, because they'll be looking for it at the beginning of the sentence.

Because we know that strong writers announce their topics at the beginning of their sentences (that is, in the topic position), we can revise this sentence pretty easily. For example, let’s make “China” the subject of the sentence as well as its topic:

China has exported a wide variety of low-priced goods into many international markets, causing its economy to expand suddenly.

Most readers would find this sentence much easier to read than the previous one.

Use The Stress Position For Emphasis

Just as readers find your writing clearest when your topic appears first, they assume information at the end of the sentence is what you want to emphasize. To see that this is the case, compare the following two sentences:

1) Times are hard, but you deserve a raise.

2) You deserve a raise, but times are hard.

Although at first glance these sentences seem to say the same thing, most readers see a big difference: the first sentence makes it seem like you’re going to get a raise, the second sentence makes it sound like you won’t. The writer creates this difference in meaning by reversing the information in the stress positions: the first sentence stresses that “you deserve a raise,” while the second stresses that “times are hard.”

There are many reasons why you might want to emphasize a particular part of your sentence. As in this example, you can use the stress position to emphasize the most important point of your sentence. We’ve put the emphasized content in red for you:

Groundwater has entered the City of Hopewell’s sewer system, exceeding the sewers’ maximum capacity.

You could also use the stress position to emphasize the positive or negative outcomes of your sentence for your reader. Some readers might require a different emphasis than others. That’s what happens in the following examples:

1) Though Kentucky bluegrass loses its leaves in hot weather, the crown and roots will remain alive and capable of regenerating the plant when moisture returns.

2) Currently, student pilots learn how to fly aircraft on a one-on-one basis with their flight instructor—an approach that is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and apt to result in a lack of standardization.

As you can see, you can emphasize any number of ideas by putting them in the stress position of your sentence. This is because the stress position at the end of each sentence is the last word that you’ll leave your readers with—the thing they will remember most about your topic. You can manipulate the flow of information so that it’s most appealing to a particular reader.

Because readers expect your topic to be at the beginning of your sentence, you should announce it in the topic position—and usually make it the grammatical subject of your sentence. And because readers expect emphasis at the end of your sentence, you should put the sentence's “take away” ideas in the stress position. If you can do that, you can control the flow of your information to convey your ideas clearly and effectively.