From the debate, last lesson
Six sentences taken down during the debate. Five are cleft errors of five different kinds. One is repaired by deleting rather than by adding.
Six sentences. One problem each.
1. It was in 2019 when the funding formula changed.
2. What I disagree with is it the timing.
3. It is the parents who is being asked to pay.
4. What we did was we wrote to the council.
5. The reason why we object is because nobody was asked.
6. This is a really very absolutely central point.
The finding
Cheap and expensive
Every language has ways of marking one part of a sentence as the point. What is unusual about written English is how sharply those ways differ in price — and how directly the price determines the effect.
The cheapest is an intensifier. Really. One word, available to anybody, attachable to anything, requiring no rearrangement of the sentence at all. And because it costs nothing to produce, it carries almost nothing: a reader who meets really important has learned that you consider it important, which they had already assumed from the fact that you wrote it down.
The expensive options are structural. Fronting moves an element out of its normal position. An it-cleft spends a dummy subject, a form of be and a relative clause to promote one phrase. A wh-cleft builds an entire clause of scaffolding before the point arrives. Every one of these costs syntax, and syntax is the only currency written English has to spend.
From which follows the rule that surprises people, because it runs backwards: the more you intensify, the less emphatic you sound. Four intensifiers in a paragraph and the reader stops registering them individually; what comes through is not the importance of the content but the anxiety of the writer. Delete all four and the paragraph is more forceful, not less.
There is a matching failure at the expensive end, and it is subtler. A cleft does not simply emphasise; it presupposes. It was the deposit that decided it tells the reader that something decided it — treated as already known — and asserts which thing, against the others in the running. That is what the extra clause buys. But if nothing else was ever in the running, the presupposition points at a contrast the reader cannot locate, and they spend a fraction of a second hunting for the rival before giving up. That fraction of a second costs more than the emphasis gained.
Which gives the two-sided test the rest of this lesson works on. Cheap emphasis: delete it. Expensive emphasis: earn it, by being able to name the thing you are contrasting with. A cleft with no rival is weaker than the plain sentence it replaced.
Three questions.
1. Why does an intensifier carry so little?
2. What does a cleft presuppose?
3. What happens when a cleft has no rival to contrast with?
Five errors, and the sound of a cleft
What goes wrong, and what the reader does about it
| Error | Example | Repair, and why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · when for that | It was in March that we applied. The cleft slot always takes that, or who for a person. When, where and why belong to relative clauses, which this is not. | |
| 2 · The gap filled twice | What I object to is the timing. The wh-clause already leaves a gap after to. Naming it again with a pronoun fills the same hole twice. | |
| 3 · Agreement with it | …who have been ignored. The verb after who agrees with the clefted noun, not with the dummy it. | |
| 4 · The clause reopened | What they did was withdraw it (or was to withdraw it). Was closes the build-up; a new subject after it starts a second sentence inside the first. | |
| 5 · The unearned cleft | Reading improves your vocabulary. Nothing is in the running, so the presupposition sends the reader looking for a rival that is not there. |
The sound of it, which is the half nobody practises. A cleft carries one specific melody: the clefted element takes the main stress, and everything after it drops, because everything after it is old news.
It was the DEPOSIT that decided it. — the whole relative clause is flat and fast.
What nobody has explained is the DATE. — the entire build-up is flat; only the last element carries.
Stress the second half and you have undone the construction: the sentence now marks as new exactly what the grammar has marked as given, and it sounds like a list rather than a point. Say both examples aloud twice, once correctly and once wrongly, and listen for the difference.
Use the word in capitals to form a word that fits the gap. All eight belong to the vocabulary of argument.
- The whole case rests on an nobody has examined. ASSUME
- Her objection struck me as entirely . REASON
- The two reports reach flatly conclusions. CONTRADICT
- He dismissed the proposal without any at all. JUSTIFY
- The claim is , which is exactly what makes it worth testing. FALSIFY
- The evidence so far is either way. CONCLUDE
- She restated the same position far more the second time. PERSUADE
- The witness gave a badly account of the evening. CONSIST
Four questions.
1. Which word fills the cleft slot in It was in March ___ we applied?
2. In It is the residents who ___ been ignored, the verb agrees with…
3. Where does the stress fall in It was the deposit that decided it?
4. Before you cleft a sentence, what must you be able to do?
Earning it, and undoing it
Rewrite each sentence using the word given. Two of the eight are repaired by removing structure, not adding it — the note in brackets tells you which.
The funding caused the delay, not the planning permission. WAS
I really strongly object to the way the vote was held. (replace the intensifiers with structure) WHAT
Nobody has explained why the date was chosen, and that is my complaint. HAS
They did not lose the contract because of the price. The reference was the reason. NOT
The scheme needs a proper trial, and nothing else will do. NEEDS
She only realised the mistake after the deadline had passed. THAT
We agree about the aim. The method is the point of disagreement. WHERE
It is the environment that we must protect. (no rival has been mentioned — undo the cleft) MUST
Eight sentences. Seven need work; one is correct as written.
1. It was in September when the consultation closed.
2. What the report does not say is it how the figure was reached.
3. It is the smaller suppliers who is worst affected.
4. What they did was they withdrew the application.
5. The reason why nobody replied is because the notice went out in August.
6. It was the timing that we objected to, not the cost. — correct as written
7. It is definitely absolutely essential that we really act now.
8. It is reading that improves your vocabulary. — in a paragraph where no other method has been named
Write it badly, then rebuild it
Task card · Writing and speaking · Pairs · 10 minutes
You are each going to write sixty words as badly as you can — arguing for something you genuinely believe, with as much cheap emphasis packed in as will fit.
Swap, strip, and then spend the money once. One cleft each, and it has to be defensible.
- Four minutes: sixty words, at least eight intensifiers — really · very · totally · absolutely · completely · definitely · extremely · hugely.
- Swap. Delete every intensifier and read what is left aloud. Most of it survives untouched, and reads harder.
- Choose exactly one sentence to cleft, and write the rival underneath it: not ___, but ___.
- Hand it back. Your partner decides whether the rival is findable from the paragraph alone. If they have to ask, the cleft was unearned — undo it and pick a different sentence.
Eight words deleted, one clause added. That is the trade the whole unit is about, and it is a good deal in both directions: the paragraph gets shorter and more emphatic at the same time, which is only a paradox if you think emphasis is a matter of volume.
What survived the deletion
Two questions.
1. What happened to your partner’s paragraph when every intensifier came out?
2. Could you name the rival for the sentence you chose to cleft?
Cost is the signal
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. Four intensifiers in a paragraph make it…
2. When is a cleft weaker than the plain sentence?
Next. Three hundred and forty words of argument in writing, where the cheap options are easiest of all to reach for — and where a reader cannot hear your voice at all.