ClearTips: Stunning sentences

It

Starting a sentence with It is generally to be avoided, as in It is Johnson who damaged . . . , It can now be stated with certainty that . . . , or It goes without saying that . . . (why say it?). The reason: something deserving emphasis at the start of a sentence becomes submerged by the fatty opening. But an opening it can get a paragraph or entire piece off to a fast, emphatic, monosyllabic start.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

Notice how clean this opening is.

It is not at all hard to see how the American economy could support a much larger medical sector; it is, however, very hard to see how the U.S. Government will manage to pay for its share of that sector's costs.

It is wartime; no new labor is coming in from the old countries across the seas.

It is that old, old issue with those old, old battered labels—the issue of Isolationism versus Internationalism.

Back to Stunning sentences • Next