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  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/essays/emphasis-and-stuff",
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  "path": "/posts/essays/emphasis-and-stuff",
  "publishedAt": "2019-06-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "; foreword\n: What you're seeing a repost of an old forum post I wrote three years\n  ago on the now-defunct WebFictionGuide site.  I'm rehosting it here\n  for posterity, and proximity to my other essays.\n\n; related\n: - [](prosaic-virtues.html), a newer and completer treatment.\n\nI'm told I write good prose, and there are a few topics that come up\nagain and again when I'm line editing for other people, so I decided I\ncould write a short article or two about the sorts of things I think\nabout when editing prose. Today I decided to write about emphasis and\nstuff.\n\nIntroduction\n\nEmphasis, focus, and contrast are subtly different but I'll be using\nthem to mean to more or less the same thing in this article.  The\nshort of it is emphasis is where a reader's focus is drawn and where\nit lingers, and long of it is this article.\n\nI'll be talking about sentences in this article as if some are 'good'\nand others 'bad'. In general these concepts refer to nothing; every\nutterance has many meanings and interpretations, and one can only\nspeak objectively by making assumptions, and none of those assumptions\nare grounded (they are the ground).\n\nIn practice though, web fiction doesn't really explore the outer\nlimits of language (that's for the poets and experimentalists), and\nit's fair to speak of certain qualities of sentences being a good fit\nfor the aesthetics we strive for.  Clarity, ease of parsing,\nsimplicity, etc.\n\nEven given the fact that certain styles of sentence are more useful\nfor ordinary fiction, this article won't be a list of rules or\ntutorial on achieving something specific.  You only need to know that\ncertain kinds of emphasis exist, and the effects they often have on\nthe reader. This awareness will make all your future fiddling with\nemphasis intentional, and intentionality is what it takes to be good,\nor at least to improve.\n\nEmphasis is a hierarchy of meaning.  It communicates to the reader\nthat certain things are more important than others, and eases parsing\nand understanding the text.  Your sentences emphasize whether you\nintend them or not; but if done unintentionally, it's possible for the\nemphasis of a sentence to confuse or even fight its meaning.\nHopefully after reading, you'll be more aware of when and where that\ncan happen.\n\nMost sentences you'll write are fine, because you understand how to\nuse language, but the goal this article is to equip you with new\ndiagnoses for the sentences that fail, and alert you to sentences with\nunseen and subtle imperfections.\n\nStart/Stop Emphasis\n\n> There was a well-dressed, youthful woman like a snapping flame\n> leaning aggressively and warily against the sagging and dilapidated\n> wall crawling with desaturated graffiti like tattoos all over it.\n\nThis is a messy exaggeration of a sentence.  There are a number of\nproblems with it, and as we go on, I'll apply the concepts discussed\nto this sentence.\n\nThe easiest and most significant form of emphasis I will call\nstart/stop emphasis. A sentence's beginning is emphasized, and a\nsentence's end is emphasized.  To me, the end of a sentence has\ngreater emphasis than the beginning, but generally, this is something\nyou have to feel out.\n\nIf we look at the start and end of the example, all you'll see is low\nmeaning filler: \"There was\" and \"all over it\". Note that it doesn't\nsuffice to just cut the filler; it's better to understand what it's\ndoing and decide if it's not doing what you want.\n\nThe effect of \"There was\" (to my ear) is to single out an object in\nisolation and stillness, and focus all attention on it.  Compare:\n\"There was a chair,\" to \"A chair sat on the deck,\" or \"A chair fell.\"\nSentences starting with \"There was\" are more boring, have less\ncontent, and are somewhat limp. This isn't a bad thing; not every\nsentence needs to burst with action and meaning, or be squeezed so\ntight as to thrum.\n\nThe \"all over it\" is a very common construct: a proposition anxiously\nfollowing a verb up with more (unnecessary) context and specification.\nWithout it, the sentence comes to a definite forceful stop, but with\nit the sentence is almost gently guided to its end.\n\nThese are examples, but you see the general idea: listen to the\nsentence, and analyze what the parts make you feel, and decide if\nthat's best for the sentence.\n\nNow, back to the sentence. Each of these constructs have meaning and\nuse, even at the start or end of a sentence. But to start editing this\nsentence, we have to decide which parts are most important. The\nobvious choices are the woman, her act of leaning, or the wall she\nleans upon.  Context would help here --- have we seen the woman\nbefore?  Or her aggressive lean? Is the wall new?\n\nI'm going to choose the wall, simply because I like the tattoo imagery.\n\n> Sagging and dilapidated, the wall supported a well-dressed, youthful\n> woman like a snapping flame, leaning aggressively and vigilantly, and\n> over it crawled desaturated graffiti like old tattoos.\n\nThe sentence, starting and stopping on more significant words, is\nstronger; but the meaning is also a little clearer for putting\ndescriptions of the wall at both ends.\n\n(Note that this creates a very resolved-feeling sentence, the sort\nthat could stand alone as a paragraph. If it didn't stand alone, it\nmay be better to cut the last clause (ending after \"vigilantly\"),\nwhich would lead naturally into, say, a sentence focusing on the\nwoman. But issues of flow are out of scope of this article.)\n\nThe principle isn't limited to the sentence; inside of sentences, the\nwords around commas or dashes or whatever else are emphasized.\nOutside of them, the start and end of paragraphs are emphasized, and\nof course we all know how dramatic the last line of a chapter can be.\n\nModifier Emphasis\n\nThis is a very important kind of emphasis. A modified word seems more\nimportant than an unmodified word, and a word with more modifiers\nseems more important still (but beware --- returns diminish fast).\n\nThis is something our example sentence doesn't understand, and the\nsubject, object and verb all have multiple modifiers. This is one of\nthe traps of adjectives and adverbs; careless use can create\nlost-feeling sentences that don't know what they're about.\n\nWe've decided the wall should be the focus of the sentence, and so\nlet's cut out stray modifiers that might confuse that.\n\n> Sagging and dilapidated, the wall complaintlessly supported a\n> youthful woman, and over it crawled desaturated graffiti like\n> old tattoos.\n\nThis is a simple principle, but helpful once pointed out. Careful\nmodifying can signal to readers which parts of the sentence they\nshould pay attention to.\n\nDiction Emphasis\n\nDiction ought to be a whole article on its own, but it's somewhat\ndistant to the concerns of emphasis.\n\nIn short, when there are multiple ways of phrasing something, diction\nis what phrasing the author chooses. It varies along many axes, like\nfrom simple (\"watch\") to more sophisticated (\"observe\"), or general\n(\"bug\") to more specific (\"Green June beetle\").\n\nWhat matters here is just that the more exotic your diction is, the\nmore focus it commands.  It is, somewhat, a matter of contrast --- a\nsudden latinate formalism in otherwise down to earth prose emphasizes,\nbut so would a slang term in an otherwise sophisticated, distant\nvoice.  If it's not a change, it's not an emphasis.\n\n> Sagging and crumbling, the wall complaintlessly supported a young\n> woman, and all over it crawled grayed-out graffiti like old tattoos.\n\nThis effect is rather subtle. And personally, I have a bias against\nbig or latinate words, and so I tend not to use them without a reason\nto.  So here, I'm using this as an excuse to change the big words I\ndislike, and even out the emphasis. But in general it's fair to say\n\"conflagration\" draws the attention like \"big fire\" does not, and you\ncan do something with that.\n\nConclusion\n\n> Sagging and crumbling, the wall complaintlessly supported a young\n> woman, and all over it crawled grayed-out graffiti like old tattoos.\n\nThis is not the same sentence. I think it is a better sentence, but\nmeaningful elements of it were cut out in support of what I wanted the\nsentence to say.  The point of it all is for a sentence to have a\ncoherent design.  Know what the hierarchy of meaning in a sentence is,\nand edit toward that.",
  "title": "Emphasis and Stuff"
}