ClearTips: Stunning sentences

Reversals

The reversal adds to the power of what you mean by stating the same idea negatively and then positively, or sometimes vice versa. The negative to positive is stronger because it sets up an expectation.

Medical expenditures used to be small, not because doctors were cheap or hospitals were well managed but because there was only so much medicine had to offer, no matter how much you were willing to spend.

Two competing causes, and the writer tells you which is not the real one and which is, starting with the negative. Imagine the order reversed—and the loss of suspense.

The trouble is not with the facts. The trouble is that clear and honest inferences have not been drawn from the facts.

It's not so much that Wallace thinks about politics all the time as that she is continually registering its consequences on the lives of all the people she knows.

It is not that problems are not solved and questions not answered, but every solved problem generates dozens of new ones and the process gives no sign of ending.

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