Means of emphasis in English

There are a number of ways to add emphasis to your sentences in English. Use these forms to emphasize your statements when you are expressing your opinions, disagreeing, making strong suggestions, expressing annoyance, etc.

1) The use of Emphatic stress is a special stress that is given by the speaker to some word in a sentence, usually to single out, compare, correct or clarify things.

2) The use of HIGH pre-head. The High pre-head has a clearly emphatic function. Before a Rise it usually gives a bright, lively, encouraging character to the utterance. Ex. We had a lovely trip.

3) The use of Low Pre-Head. The LOW pre-head may occur in unemphatic and many emphatic utterances. It may be combined with any of 6 main tones. It marks the comparative unimportance of initial unstressed syllables.

4) The use of compound tones, such as Rise-Fall, Fall-Rise.

- The Fall-Rise is widely used as means of both logical emphasis and emphasis for contrast. It makes the utterance expressive enough. The speaker sounds warm, sympathetic; in special questions- weary (утомлённый).

- The Rise-Fall is highly emotional. The speaker is impressed and sometimes even rude in the case of negative emotions. Ex. The cake is spoilt!

5) The use of stepping and Sliding head. The Step. Head makes the utterance sound more persuasive. The Sliding Head due to “jumpy” form usually reflects an excited state of mind, and, sometimes, a highly emotional attitude to the situation.

6) The use of the Passive. By using a passive sentence, we emphasize by showing what happens to something rather than who or what does something.

7) Inversion. Placing a prepositional phrase or other expression (at no time, suddenly into, little, seldom, never, etc.) at the beginning of the sentence followed by inverted word order. Ex. Little did I understand what was happening. Note that the auxiliary verb is placed before the subject which is followed by the main verb.

8) Sentences introduced by 'It is' or 'It was' are often used to emphasize a specific subject or object. The introductory clause is then followed by a relative pronoun.

Ex. It was I who received the promotion.

9) Sentences introduced by a clause beginning with 'What' are also used to emphasize a specific subject or object. The clause introduced by 'What' is employed as the subject of the sentence as is followed by the verb 'to be'. Ex: What we need is a good long shower.