Six that emphasise nothing
Six sentences. Each is grammatical. Each marks something nobody was disputing.
1. It was on Monday that I went to work. — opening a piece, nothing established
2. What I did was have breakfast. — in an ordinary narrative
3. It is the report that is late. — the reader does not yet know anything is late
4. What happened was that it rained. — first line of an account
5. It was the council that made the decision. — nobody has suggested anybody else did
6. What I want to say is that I agree. — nothing has been asked
Earned and unearned
Two paragraphs about the same delay
Earned. Everybody has assumed that the hold-up was the budget, and the budget was approved in April. It was the recruitment freeze that stopped it — a decision taken in a different meeting, by people who did not know the project existed.
Unearned. It was the recruitment freeze that stopped it. The freeze was decided in March. It was in a different meeting that the decision was taken. What the people in that meeting did was not know the project existed.
Six sentences. Match each to what it does — or fails to do.
The test, and the other four ways
The test, and it takes three seconds. A cleft presupposes everything except its focus. It was Marta who wrote it presupposes that somebody wrote it.
So: turn the unfocused part into a question and ask whether your reader is already holding it. Who wrote it? — if they are, the cleft is earned. If they are not, you have answered a question nobody asked, and the contrast points at nothing.
An unearned cleft is not a small stylistic slip. The reader goes looking for the alternative you have ruled out, does not find one, and reads the whole sentence again.
Five ways to emphasise, in order of cost
| Device | Cost | When |
|---|---|---|
| End-focus …by people who did not know the project existed. | Free | Almost always. Put the new thing last and most sentences need nothing else |
| A short sentence after long ones The lift works. | Free | When a paragraph has been building and needs to land |
| Repetition of a key word Six months. Six months is the barrier. | Cheap | When one term is the argument and you want it in the reader’s head |
| A cleft It was the freeze that stopped it. | A whole clause | When the reader is already holding the question, and one candidate has to be ruled out |
| Fronting That I do not accept. | A whole word order | Rarely, and never twice in a piece. It is the most marked thing on this list |
Awareness only, and not for production yet. English also emphasises by inverting after a negative adverbial: Not once did anybody ask. · Never has a decision been made so quickly. You will meet this in argumentative reading and it is worth recognising. It belongs to C1 and it is left there; a B2 essay that reaches for it usually gets the word order wrong and always sounds as though it is straining.
Five questions. Apply the test.
1. First line of an essay: It was the deposit that decided who could come.
2. After a paragraph arguing that rents are the barrier: It was never the rent that decided it.
3. What I want to say is that I agree.
4. How many clefts can a 340-word essay carry?
5. What should you try before reaching for a cleft?
Earn it, or do not spend it
Seven gaps. Some want a cleft; more of them want the plain sentence.
Everybody assumed the hold-up was the budget. approved in April. the recruitment freeze that stopped it. The freeze in March, in a different meeting. the people in that meeting did not know the project existed. nobody has explained is why the two decisions were never connected. a process problem, not a budget one — and the process that is still in place.
Rewrite each using the word given — and for two of them, the right answer is to leave the cleft out.
Everybody assumed it was the budget. In fact the freeze stopped it. IT
Nobody has explained why the two decisions were never connected. WHAT
I agree with the conclusion. AGREE
The problem is the process rather than the budget. IT
It rained on Tuesday, which is when the site was closed. RAINED
One cleft only
Task card · Pairs · 10 minutes · Writing
Write six sentences arguing one side of a question you care about. You are allowed exactly one cleft.
Five minutes writing, five defending the placement.
- Write the six sentences first without any cleft at all.
- Then choose the one place where a candidate genuinely has to be ruled out, and put it there.
- Swap. Your partner applies the test: what question was the reader holding at that point?
- If they cannot state the question, the cleft moves — or comes out.
Writing it without first is the point. A cleft written into a first draft is almost always unearned, because at the moment of writing you have not yet established anything. Clefts are a second-draft device.
Where the cleft went
Two questions.
1. Where did the earned clefts turn out to be?
2. What did you do before the cleft, to earn it?
The question the reader is holding
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What is the test for a cleft?
2. What should you try first?
Next. A structured debate in which every turn has to locate the disagreement before it argues about it.