Adding Emphasis - Special Forms

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.

Use of the Passive

The passive voice is used when focusing on the person or thing affected by an action. Generally, more emphasis is given to the beginning of a sentence. By using a passive sentence, we emphasize by showing what happens to something rather than who or what does something.

Example:

Reports are expected by the end of the week.

In this example, attention is called to what is expected of students (reports).

Inversion

Invert the word order by 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.

Examples:

At no time did I say you couldn't come. Hardly had I arrived when he started complaining.Little did I understand what was happening.Seldom have I felt so alone.

Note that the auxiliary verb is placed before the subject which is followed by the main verb.

Expressing Annoyance

Use the continuous form modified by 'always', 'forever', etc