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1、Chapter Three Producing Effective Sentences,Base 3:Emphasis,Part II Building Good Sentence,Base 3:Emphasis,Understanding Emphasis,1.Arranging Ideas Effectively,2.Repeating Ideas,3.Separating Ideas,Preferring the Active Voice to the Passive Voice,Understanding Emphasis,Understanding Emphasis,Well-man
2、aged sentences also emphasize important information by making it readily apparent within a sentence.We can control emphasis within sentences in three ways:by placing the most important ideas in strong positions;by using repetition carefully;and,when a statement is important enough,by separating it f
3、rom surrounding information.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Arranging ideas within sentences for emphasis involves two principles.First,the most emphatic positions within a sentence are the beginning and the ending,the ending being the more emphatic of the two.Second,parallel series of words,phrases,or
4、 clauses will be most emphatic if the elements appear in order of their increasing importance.,1.Arranging Ideas Effectively,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Points to Consider,(1)Using Sentence Beginnings and Endings,One good way to improve loosely-arranged sentences is to try putting the important idea
5、s at the beginning or in the end.Sentences thus composed,just like balanced sentences usually impressive,because they build to a big finish by saving the main idea until the end,just before the period.,Let us see the difference of occupying positions in these examples:,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Ex
6、ample 1,Unemphatic:Seymour made the honor roll while holding down a part-time job and playing the lead in Hamlet.,Emphatic:While holding down a part-time job and playing the lead in Hamlet,Seymour made the honor roll.,Example 2,Unemphatic:The students here are mostly moderates,though not all.,Emphat
7、ic:The students here are mostly,though not all,moderates.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Example 3,Unemphatic:Our first consideration must be the preservation of our environment,even though preventing pollution costs money.,Emphatic:Even though preventing pollution costs money,our first consideration m
8、ust be the preservation of our environment.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Example 4,Unemphatic:Education remains the most important single means of economic advancement,in spite of all its shortcomings.,Revised:In spite of all its shortcomings,education remains the most important single means of econo
9、mic advancement.,Revised:Education remains,in spite of all its shortcomings,the most important single means of economic advancement.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Comment:In the first sentence our final attention rests on educations shortcomings rather than on its importance,even though the latter is
10、clearly what the writer wished to emphasize.The first revision,by placing the qualifying phrase at the beginning of the sentence,leaves some stress on the qualification but emphasizes educations importance more.The second revision de-emphasizes the qualification even further by inserting it in the m
11、iddle of the sentence,leaving both education and its importance at the emphatic points of the sentence.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Cumulative,Understanding Cumulative,Those sentences that most often begin with the subject and predicate plus their modifiers and then add modifiers at the end are call
12、ed cumulative(because they accumulate information as they proceed)or loose(because they are not tightly structured)in rhetoric.,Examples,Cumulative:The divers searched for treasure on the smooth bottom of the bay,along the coral reef,and on the deep,rocky seabed.,Cumulative:The old man bitterly hate
13、d all social planning,having been unaware of social problems during most of his life and now choosing to ignore them.,Comment:As these examples illustrate,the cumulative sentence completes its main statement first and then explains,amplifies,or illustrates it.The primary emphasis lies on the opening
14、 main clause,but the sentence continues to provide new information.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Periodic,Understanding Periodic,The opposite kind of sentence is called periodic,which saves the main clause until just before the end(the period)of the sentence.Everything before the main clause points t
15、oward it by telling the reader how to interpret it.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Examples,Periodic:In three years,two months,and seven days,according to his view,the world will end.,Periodic:Though his lawyer defended him eloquently and he himself begged for leniency in a moving plea,the jury found h
16、im guilty.,Comment:Periodic sentence has an alternative form.This form,as a variation of the periodic,names the subject at the beginning,follows it with a modifier,and then fills in the predicate.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Example,Uncle John,whom everyone calls a cheat
17、and a liar,is actually a warm and generous man.,Note:Whether the subject comes first or is delayed along with the predicate,the periodic sentence as well as its variation creates suspense for the reader by delaying the important information of the main clause until the end of the sentence.,Activity,
18、Make a comparison between cumulative and periodic revisions of an unemphatic sentence.,Examples,Unemphatic:Under half steam and spewing black smoke,the ship finally reached port with its hull batten and a hole punched in its bow.,Cumulative:The ship finally reached port under half steam and spewing
19、black smoke,with its hull battered and a hole punched in its bow.,Periodic:Under half steam and spewing black smoke,with its hull battered and a hole punched in its bow,the ship finally reached port.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Comment:The cumulative sentence parallels th
20、e way we naturally think(by accumulating information),and it does not tax the memory of readers.The periodic sentence,on the other hand,is more contrived,and it requires careful planning so that the reader can remember all the information leading up to the main clause.We should save the periodic sen
21、tence to emphasize a key idea,to round out a paragraph,or to conclude an essay.,Activity,Exercises for Emphasis,Underline the main clause in each sentence below,and identify the sentence as cumulative or periodic.Then rewrite each cumulative sentence as a periodic one and each periodic sentence as a
22、 cumulative one.,（1）One of the most disastrous cultural influences ever to hit America was Walt Disneys Mickey Mouse,that idiot optimist who each week marched forth in Technicolor against a battalion of cats,invariably humiliating them with one clever trick after another.,Arranging Ideas Effectively
23、,（2）At length,in the beginning of May,with the help of some of my acquaintances,rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity,I set up the frame of my house.,（3）Because they wanted a fair price for their crops and felt the government was not doing enough for them,t
24、he farmers marched on Washington.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,（4）Matthews children worked two years to get him out of jail writing letters,seeing lawyers,attending meetings because they knew him to be honest and believed him to be innocent.,（5）Its neck stretched forward,its wings beating against the
25、 water,the swan took flight.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Arranging Ideas Effectively,2.Combine each group of sentences below into a single cumulative sentence and then into a single periodic sentence.You will have to add,delete,change,and rearrange words,and each item has more than two possible answ
26、ers.Does the cumulative or the periodic sentence seem more effective to you?,Example,The woman refused any treatment.She felt that her life was completed.She wished to die.,Cumulative:The woman refused any treatment,feeling that her life was completed and wishing to die.,Periodic:Feeling that her li
27、fe was completed and wishing to die,the woman refused any treatment.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Arranging Ideas Effectively,（1）The combined technology of computers and television will dramatically change our lives.The change will occur in the few years remaining before the end of the century.,（2）Th
28、e abandoned car was a neighborhood eyesore.Its windows were smashed.Its body was rusted and dented.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,（3）Two trains raced across the river.Their wheels were spinning.Their engines were parallel.Their engines were billowing smoke.,（4）Carl walked with his back straight.He hel
29、d his head high.He stared straight ahead.He hid his shame.,（5）The leaf fell slowly.It was wafted by the wind.It was performing graceful somersaults.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,3.Read the following extract carefully to ensure that the overall meaning of the text is clear and that the parts of the te
30、xt are logically linked.Then decide which of the three sentences provided after it fills the gap best.Why do the other sentences not fit?,Normally,you would expect price to be the only important issue when selling a company.If the owner of a business decides to sell,it is usually in order to get as
31、much cash from the sale as possible.But it is not always the case.However,much might be offered,the owners could refuse to sell,especially if the owner would then use the company to take market share from the former parent company.,With sales of family firms,the family often feels it does not want t
32、o be exploited.,B.If an organization is selling a subsidiary,for example,it is unlikely to sell to a competitor.,C.To get around this,the value of the company can be set by an independent auditor.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Arranging Ideas Effectively,4.Consider some possible formulations of senten
33、ces that might be used to fill in the gap in the following extract from Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Times.Pay attention to the information flow.,Ptolemys model provided a reasonably accurate system for predicting the positions of heavily bodies in the sky.And that meant that the moon ought s
34、ometimes to appear twice as big as at other times!,But Ptolemy had to made an assumption that the moon followed a path that sometimes brought it twice as close to the earth as other times,in order to predict these positions correctly.,B.But an assumption that Ptolemy had to make in order to predict
35、these positions correctly was that the moon followed a path that sometimes brought it twice as close to the earth as at other times.,C.But in order to predict these positions correctly,Ptolemy had to make an assumption that the moon followed a path that sometimes brought it twice as close to the ear
36、th as at other times.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,(2)Arranging Parallel Elements Effectively,1)Series,Parallelism requires that you express coordinate ideas in similar grammatical structures.A series of grammatically parallel elements can be weak if you arrange the elements randomly.,Arranging Ideas
37、 Effectively,Example 1,Unemphatic:The storm ripped the roofs off several buildings,killed ten people and knocked down many trees in town.,Comment:In this sentence the three kinds of damage are named without regard for their relative importance:trees knocked down the least serious damage,concludes th
38、e series,and people killed the most serious damage,are buried in the middle of the series.The revised sentence below arranges the items in the order of their increasing importance so that the most important item comes at the end,the most emphatic point.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Emphatic：The storm
39、 knocked down many trees in town,ripped the roofs off several buildings,and killed ten people.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Example 2,Unemphatic:After years of teaching,Anna decided to quit when she realized that she actually disliked children,that her fellow teachers bored her,and that she didnt hav
40、e enough time for her hobbies.,Emphatic:After years of teaching,Anna decided to quit when she realized that she didnt have enough time for her hobbies,that her fellow teachers bored her,and that she actually disliked children.,Comment:We may want to use an unexpected item at the end of a series for
41、humor or for another special effect.For example:Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy,wealthy,and Dead.,But be careful not to use such a series unintentionally.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Examples,Unemphatic:The painting has subdued tone,great feeling,and a length of about three feet.,
42、Emphatic:The painting,about three feet long,has subdued tone and great feeling.,2)Balanced Sentences,Balanced sentence depend upon repetitionsometimes of the same words,always of the same grammatical structures:phrases,clauses,sometimes the whole sentences.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Example 1,Virg
43、inia Woolf repeats the same adverb,changing the verb each time to achieve this impressive sentence:,One cannot think well,love well,sleep well,if one has not dined well.,Example 2,Mark Twain balances independent clauses for a comic effect in this line spoken by the narrator of A Dogs Tale:“My father
44、 was a St.Bernard,my mother was a collie.but I am Presbyterian.”,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Comment:While parallel structure lends itself particularly well to emphatic sentences,the technique is fundamental to all good writing.If we by chance put together a sentence involving two similar elements o
45、r a series of them,our readers expect these similar parts to be balanced(or parallel).Such a structure may occur whenever you join parts of sentences with any of the coordinating conjunctions(and,but,or,for,nor,yet,so).,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Activity,Consider the problem first in this simple e
46、xample.,Clyde likes to smoke and drinking.,Example,Comment:Your readers expect those italicized parts to sound alike,to be balanced in construction,like the following:,Clyde likes to smoke and drink.,Clyde likes smoking and drinking.,The first sentence uses infinitive phrases with to understood befo
47、re drink;the second one uses two gerundial verbs.Therefore,they are both identical in sound and construction.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Activity,Let us try a more typical example-the kind of sentence youre likely to write in a hurry and should put into parallel structure when you revise.,Example,P
48、oliticians today face the difficult tasks of solving urban problems and how to find the money without raising taxes.,Comment:This one is easy to repair.You need to balance the two grammatical structures connected by and:solving urban problems and how to find the money.The easiest way is to make how
49、to find sound like solving;that is,use the gerund verb finding as illustrated below.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Revised:Politicians today face the difficult task of solving urban problems and finding the money without raising taxes.,Conclusion:Having mastered the construction of balanced sentences,
50、we will find the technique perfect for composing climactic sentences.Martin Luther King,Jr.,learned from the Bible how to balance phrases with ringing effect.,Arranging Ideas Effectively,Example,With this faith we will be able to work together,to pray together,to struggle together,to go to jail toge
