Page 58 - English for Writing Research Papers

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Readers tend to focus on the first and last words of a sentence, so avoid placing your
most important information in the middle of a long sentence. Readers don’t want to
make an effort to identify the key points, they want to be told immediately.

Here are some more examples that show how by changing the order of information
within a sentence you can achieve a different effect:

S3. English is now studied by 1.1 billion people, though this number is expected to drop with
the rise in importance of Chinese.
S4. Although English is now studied by 1.1 billion people, this number is expected to drop
with the rise in importance of Chinese.
S5. Although the importance of Chinese is expected to lead to a drop in the numbers of people
studying English, 1.1 billion people still study English.

S3–S5 all contain the same information, but the weight that this information is given
varies.
In S3 the reader learns some information. This information is then qualifi ed with
though , which is used to introduce some new information that the author imagines
that the reader does not know.
In S4 the reader is immediately alerted to the fact that the information contained at
the beginning of the sentence is going to be qualified by new information in the

second part. The order of the information in S4 is thus more logical than in S3.
In S5 the writer assumes that the reader already knows the importance of Chinese
and instead focuses on the fact that despite the increase in the number of Chinese
speakers, English is still studied by a lot of people. ‘still’ is the key word and it is
located very close to the end of the sentence.

In S1–S5 there are two parts to each sentence, and the writer gives more emphasis
to the second part. Sometimes, you may want to give equal weight to the two parts.
S6. English is the international language of communication. It is now studied by 1.1 billion
people.
S7. The importance of Chinese is expected to lead to drop in the numbers of people studying
English. Despite this, 1.1 billion people still study English.

In S6 and S7, the writer wants the reader to notice and absorb the two pieces of
important information separately. She does this by presenting the information in
two distinct sentences. This device should not be used too often because it can lead
to a series of very short sentences, which after a while begin to sound like a list.