Owens Community College Writing Center

Adding Emphasis and Variety

With the advent of computers, there has been a plethora of means to add emphasis and variety to your writing. Adding emphasis to your writing will help readers see your main ideas both within sentences as well as within the entire essay. Emphasis and variety can be achieved through design as well as through the positioning of words within the sentence.

Design elements for emphasis:

Originally, writers were limited to highlighting specific points by simply underlining in typescript thereby signaling the printer to use italics for those words. Now key words can be emphasized with underlines, italics, boldface or color. In academic writing, boldface may be used to draw attention to perhaps a word being defined, but never color. An exclamation point is also NOT acceptable in academic writing. To note the title of a book, underlining is still acceptable in MLA, but in all other styles such as APA or Chicago, italics are called for. Keep in mind that it is important to remain consistent in style when underlining or italizing.

Punctuation marks for emphasis:

Use a dash to signal a shift or break (--). When using a dash for emphasis in the middle of the sentence you must close the break with a dash after the insert. Beware the overuse of the dash; like the overuse of red pepper, a little adds spice and too much is a disaster! o A dash can signal a shift in tone. o A dash can signal an introductory series and the following explanation. o A dash can be used instead of a comma to signal nonessential elements. Use a colon to introduce a concluding explanation, series or long quote. o Use a colon to introduce a list. Remember that the clause before the colon must be a complete, independent clause, and the following clause may either be independent or dependent. o Do not use a colon after a preposition. o Do not use a colon after the words, such as, or including.

Word choice for emphasis:

Either through repetition or through strong adjectives such as especially, crucially, or above allyou are able to signal the reader directly that a phrase is particularly significant.

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Word arrangement for emphasis:

Generally more emphasis is placed at the beginning of the sentence to create more emphasis and an active voice, place the subject immediately before the verb, so that the subject names the performer of the action. When the subject names the receiver of the action, a passive, less emphatic tone is created. o (active) The car hit the dog. o (passive) The dog was hit by the car. When a pattern of long sentences is broken by a short sentence or any other established pattern is broken, emphasis is created by the abrupt changes. Inverting the subject-verb-object pattern will create emphasis for the phrase that is out of sequence. o The student studied throughout the night hoping to earn an A. o Hoping to earn an A, the student studied throughout the night. Inserting rhetorical questions allows the reader to pause and ponder over a point, again emphasizing ideas and allowing them to be digested. o What would the world be like without cell phones?

For further ideas to help create variety and interest in your writing, refer to The Little, Brown Compact Handbook, your instructor, or the Writing Center.