Emphasise words through inversion

Writers often use inversion in their works to emphasise certain words. When the natural flow of language is manipulated, we, the readers take more notice. Also known as anastrophe, inversion is a technique in which the normal order of words is reversed in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis.

English sentences are made up of three basic components: subject (S), verb (V), and object (O). The subject of the sentence is the ‘who’ or the ‘what’; it partakes in the action. The verb is the action word and the object is the thing that receives the action.

An inverted sentence is a sentence in a normally subject-first language in which the predicate (verb) comes before the subject (noun). In other words, inverted sentences simply reverse the word order in a sentence without losing its meaning. In these sentences, the words are not scrambled randomly, but instead the subject is switched with another sentence part.

Inversion is generally used to get an effect, whereby it slows the reader down, because it is simply more difficult to comprehend the inverted word order.

Writers use inversion to emphasise a particularly important idea the writer wants to get across to the audience. Apart from that, it is used to catch the audience’s attention and make an idea more memorable.

EMPHASISE

WORDS

Usually, we put the expression at the beginning of the sentence to emphasise what we are saying. It makes our sentence sound surprising or striking.

I will never do that again.

(There is no special emphasis here.)

I also have regular music lessons apart from enjoying classical music. Note that we only use inversion when the adverb modifies the whole phrase and not when it modifies the noun.

• Hardly anyone understood what he said. (There is no inversion in this case.)

Next, we can use inversion instead of ‘if’ in conditionals with ‘had’ ‘were’ and ‘should’. This is quite formal.

If Mum had been there, this problem wouldn’t have happened.

If they had arrived sooner, they could have prevented this mishap.

Had Mum been there, this problem wouldn’t have happened.

Had they arrived sooner, they could have prevented this mishap!

We can also use inversion if we put an adverbial expression of place at the beginning on the sentence. This is also quite literary.

• Down the bumpy road sits the tiny house. • Outside the city walls there lay corn fields as far

as the eye could see. The inversion can be seen in sentences beginning with ‘so’ (+ adjective)... ‘that’.

10. Placing the verb at the end of sentence Examples:

The wedding was so grand that nobody talked of anything else. • So grand was the wedding that nobody talked of anything else.

In a similar manner we use inversion after ‘Such’+ to be + noun ... ‘that’.

Time expressions such as ‘barely’, ‘no sooner’, ‘hardly’ or ‘scarcely’ are used when there is a succession of events in the past. These time expressions are usually followed by perfect verb forms or modal auxiliary verbs.

• No sooner had he finished his speech, the

audience left.

• Hardly had she spoken when chaos started. • Scarcely had I sat down when the baby

screamed.

• Seldom have I seen anything more remarkable. • Never have I seen such a vast crowd.

We can also use inversions with the word ‘only’ in expressions such as ‘only after’, ‘only when’, ‘only then’, etc.

• Only then did I understand what it meant. • Only then did I understand what I had done. • Only after her death was I able to love her.

Apart from the word ‘only’, we have the word ‘little’. We use ‘little’ basically in a negative sense. Sentences beginning with ‘little’ have an inverted word order.

• Little did he understand my predicament. • Little did she understand what she was doing. • Little did I realise the danger I faced.

Sentences that begin with ‘here’ or ‘there’ are also inverted.

In the famous Sonnet 18, Shakespeare changes around some of the word order to make lines more poetic and stylised as in the first line of the excerpt.

often use inversion or anastrophe in order to help maintain rhythm or a rhyme scheme. Anastrophe is a form of literary device whereby the order of the noun and the adjective in the sentence is exchanged.

In standard writing the adjective comes before the noun but when one is employing an anastrophe the noun is followed by the adjective. This reversed order creates a dramatic impact and lends weight to the description offered by the adjective. Though the use of anastrophe is less common in prose, it is often used in order to create a sense of depth or wisdom to the words being written.

Shakespeare’s plays are usually poetic dramas. He often employs unusual word order so that the line will conform to the desired poetic rhythm. English sentence structure follows a sequence of subject first, verb second, and an optional object, third. Shakespeare, however, often places the verb before the subject, which reads, “Speaks he” rather than “He speaks.”

The speech patterns of Yoda the Jedi Master may be able to help you get past the biggest obstacle in studying Shakespeare: the syntax. Yoda inverts the familiar syntax.

George Lucas used the poetic pattern to characterise Yoda as both ancient and wise. Fans of ‘Star Wars’ would recognise Yoda’s lines.

• Strong you are, Luke.

• Into the mist sadly go I.

• Powerful you have become Dooku, the dark side

I sense in you.

• When nine hundred years old you reach, look as

good you will not.

• Patience you must have, my young Palawan.

President John F. Kennedy employed inversion for rhetorical effect when he inverted the typical positive-tonegative parallelism.

Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.