ClearTips: Stunning sentences

First and last

First and last—the two parts of sentences that are most emphatic. (My first draft of this sentence was The first and last parts of sentences are the most emphatic, the last usually the most.) That is why it pays to see whether you can change the common order to draw attention to more important words.

Wings, legs, lungs: all were revolutionary mutations once.

Stacking words at the front of a sentence, abruptly attaching them to their pronoun with a colon or dash, sets them off more starkly than does running them in.

Propagandist, moralist, prophet—this is the rising sequence.

At least two-thirds of us are just plain rich compared to all the rest of the human family—rich in food, rich in clothes, rich in entertainment and amusement, rich in leisure, rich.

Imagine this without the exclamatory rich standing alone at the end.

He reached for a word that expressed "shame, disgrace, evil reputation, obloquy, opprobrium." His choice: infamy.

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