Two sentences can be truth-conditionally identical yet feel utterly different in context. Information structure — the packaging of given and new information — explains why, and it governs most “which version sounds better?” decisions in skilled writing.
Given before new
English sentences flow best when they start from what the reader already knows (the or topic) and move toward what is new (the or focus):
(smooth: is given)
(jolting: new information first)
Most of the constructions in this book exist to serve this principle:
Passive keeps the topic in subject position: (paragraph about the bridge).
Clefts (Chapter [ch:inversion]) mark one element as the focus.
Fronting moves a given element to the start:
Inversion after place adverbials unveils a new subject at the end:
End-weight
English pushes long, heavy constituents to the end of the clause. Violating end-weight strains the reader even when the grammar is impeccable.
Extraposition of clausal subjects: \(\to\)
Heavy-NP shift: (long object moved after the PP)
Dative alternation: choose or so the heavier item comes last: vs. .
Phrasal verb particles: rather than .
Existential
exists to introduce brand-new referents at the end of the clause: Starting instead with the new item () sounds unnatural precisely because it violates given-before-new.
Formal variants:
Focus by stress and by syntax
Speech marks focus with intonation; writing must use syntax and lexis:
Focusing adverbs: — position them next to what they modify. (nobody else) vs. (they did nothing else) vs. . In speech, loose placement is normal; in print, misplaced genuinely misleads.
-emphasis:
Emphatic reflexives:
to (re)set the topic:
Right-dislocation (informal speech): Left-dislocation: (conversational only)
When a sentence feels awkward, diagnose it informationally: (1) Does it open with given information? (2) Does the main news come last? (3) Is the heaviest constituent at the end? Rewriting to satisfy these three checks fixes most clumsy sentences without touching the content.
Exercises
Reorder for flow Rewrite the second sentence of each pair so it flows from the first.
The lab tested three alloys. Titanium proved the most durable of the three alloys tested by the lab. (tighten)
In 2019 the firm opened a Lisbon office. Forty engineers now work in the office the firm opened in Lisbon. (tighten)
A stranger knocked at midnight. The stranger’s arrival changed everything. (fine — explain why it works)
End-weight Improve each sentence by repositioning the heavy constituent.
That anyone could survive a fall from that height without serious injury amazed the doctors.
She sent the analysis that the client had been demanding for weeks to us.
He turned the most lucrative sponsorship deal in the sport’s history down.
Focus Place to express each meaning of “She lent her car to her brother on Sundays.”
The car was the one thing she lent him.
Her brother was the one person she lent it to.
Sundays were the one day she lent it.