Hot answers tagged emphasis
62
The phrase "Believe you me" copies the archaic word order one finds in Early Modern English for a marked imperative. Typical examples are from King James version of the Bible (both testaments).
See e.g. Book of Matthew 14:16
They need not depart; give ye them to eat.
and in a few common phrases such as "mind you" (but with a slight nuance) for ...
23
Wiktionary has references from the 1840s and 1870s so this is old enough to register as a well-established idiom. I had some trouble finding other uses of "[verb] you me" until a blog pointed out the King James Bible:
For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live
Using Verb-Subject-Object order is "an archaic form used ...
16
Which word you emphasize depends on what you are trying to say.
"So what can you do?" puts the emphasis on the other person's ability or lack of ability. Like if you got a new assistant, and you assigned him some task and he did it very badly, and so you assigned him another task and he did that very badly also, you might plaintively ask, "So what can you ...
11
If the question is "does stress crucially affect meaning in English?" then the answer is yes.
In a sentence, putting stress on various words affects the meaning:
I don't love YOU. (rather, I love someone else)
I don't LOVE you. (rather, I simply like you)
In each English word, the stress is lexicalized. Some words have syllable-final stress:
...
10
If the emphasis seems like it's on the wrong word, there's a good chance that's why the italics were used in the first place. In the sentence
So what can you do?
the emphasis can be put in a number of places (I can think of four, although there may be five). That said, the objective is not to put the emphasis where the sentence packs the most punch, ...
7
I do this. It is called palatalization and is caused by the "tr" combo more than anything. The same process also occurs without "s", and with "dr". I often say, for example, "tree" as [tʃri] ("chree") and "drier" as [dʒrajɚ] ("jrier").
These variants don't come from Yiddish, German, or any other language. It is simply a natural phonological process that ...
7
The rule of Do-Support applies to every main verb in English, except auxiliary verbs.
Do-Support is the process that provides the dummy auxiliary do to carry the tense and swap with the subject in Yes/No- and Wh-Questions
Do you still love her?
What do you love about her?
tag questions
You still love her, don't you?
and negations
You don't love ...
6
I am constantly trying to remind myself to think carefully before
speaking, but those moments I forget to do so end up hurting others
and myself.
Your use of myself didn’t strike me as especially odd, at all. The only quibble I do have with the way you've written it is that you've set it up so that it’s those moments that hurt others. In fact, it’s ...
6
Hell as an interjection is most likely short for bloody hell. The use of bloody to add emphasis to an expression is of uncertain origin. Recent research suggests that is is thought to have a connection with the 'bloods'—aristocratic rowdies who were the late 17th and early 18th century equivalents of 21st century 'Chavs' and 'Pikies.'
After the mid 18th ...
6
You could add some additional words to convey the emphasis, or rephrase slightly:
Number 1:
He certainly can run fast.
He can definitely run fast.
Number 2:
Please do come in
Come in, please (more of a command, to provide the additional emphasis).
You may come in now (the emphasis on "may" in the example suggests that the listener ...
6
If you regard the don't forget as an interjection (therefore not an integral part of the sentence), it is grammatical:
Don't forget, they could be tricking us.
Note that in order for it to be acceptable, the part after the comma must be a complete sentence by itself (they could be tricking us). In a sentence like Don't forget your book, in which your ...
5
OP's second version is standard usage, which is why @Barrie calls it the "uninverted form". But note he's only referring to inversion of subject - verb (the object here being the quoted speech).
The most common structure for English sentences is subject - verb - object...
Joe said "The sky is blue".
...and the most common "sentence inversion" is ...
5
The usual expression is In and of itself, used for emphasis, so the expression in your question seems unusual.
Could it be a deliberate mistake? We need to know the context.
For example, it seems ungrammatical to say among itself since 'among' implies more than one member of a group -- but does 'itself' refer to a group?
Context would help ....
5
This question is as much about what form of the first person singular personal pronoun should follow ‘It is . . .’ as it is about the form of the subsequent verb be.
The normal response to a question such as ‘Who’s there?’ is ‘It’s me.’ However, when, as here, the clause is modified by a relative clause, I loses the formality it has in the response ‘It is ...
5
Consider the word Catholic, for example. If you put the stress on the second syllable (as it is in Catholicism), I think you will find very few people happy with your pronunciation.
So, yes — misplaced emphasis or stress can lead to significant mispronunciation.
On the other hand we have words like controversy, where the stress may come on either the first ...
5
"Much" is added for emphasis here.
It's normal to say "Much to my surprise" (which means "I {am/was} very surprised"), but not at all idiomatic to say "Much to your surprise". For that, you'd say "You'd say something like "You'll be surprised to {hear/learn/know} that he's still alive".
5
If the null hypothesis was "The cells will not divide" and your experimental data indicates that all the cells did divide, then the sentence you cite could be a very formal way of saying that the null has been rejected. It is, however, a very forced (even clumsy) construction.
I understand why you interpret "appeared" to suggest a degree of uncertainty, but ...
4
"I do be (something, something)....." is used regularly in everyday speech in South-East Ireland, where I grew up, but it is not regarded well, and a sign of being from a very specific type of rural, working class background.
Its used in this context as a continuous present:
"I do be always listening to that radio show on my way home from work"
3
Quite is a versatile word. In speech, it can mean either a lot or a little, depending on how it’s pronounced. ‘I quite like it’ indicates some reserve, but ‘I quite like it’ indicates enthusiasm.
In your examples, quite has a softening effect on so much. ‘Don't put quite so much emphasis on that sentence’ invites the listener to reduce the emphasis by just ...
3
As in many of these cases, it really depends on what you mean by "grammatically correct".
As you point out, the first version would probably be judged as sounding more natural by most native speakers. So it is certainly grammatical or "correct" in that sense.
Now, irrespectively of what sounds natural, some speakers aesthetically prefer (or have been ...
3
Well, as the saying goes, you put the acCENT on the wrong sylLABle. That is a form of mispronunciation, but if everyone is "mispronouncing" something, then it's not really a mispronunciation. And if half of the people pronounce it one way and the other half pronounce it another way, then it's just a variant.
But, yeah, if your friend pronounces the show ...
3
Where you put the accent in two-word phrases can really make a difference. There's an old children's joke:
If the red house is on the corner, and
the blue house is next to it, where is
the white house?
The answer, of course, is:
The White House is in Washington, D.C.
If you listen to this joke carefully, you will realize one reason you're ...
3
It's worth pointing out that, etymologically speaking, the roots of whether are which/either of two. It's inherently a "binary choice" word, so whereas "I don't know whether it be fish or fowl" is fine, "I don't know whether it be fish or fowl or good red herring" isn't really grammatical. Which is not to say people never use that extended form - but it does ...
2
This is more difficult to do in writing than in speech. In speech you can make the verb, noun, or preposition slightly louder than normal. In my examples, the words in all capital letters denote the emphasis.
Verbs:
He CAN run. (He is able to run, even if you doubt it)
He can RUN. (He can run very quickly)
You MAY come in. (You are permitted to come in. ...
2
A hell of (or one hell of) is used as emphasis for something very bad or great. The expression is used both in American and British English.
It cost us a hell of a lot of money.
Some expressions containing hell don't have a bad meaning. For example, for the hell of it means "just for fun," and hell for leather means "as fast as possible."
2
I highly recommend Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled". He starts by explaining the various rhythms of iambic pentameter, including all the various substitutions and how to use them effectively, and provides exercises to help you.
I wrote a poem about software development in Iambic Pentameter recently after reading this book. Iambic pentameter normally ...
2
Google search results for this bring up a lot of instances where it seems that it is a corrupted form of in and of itself and I think this is the case in the example given by the asker of this question.
In and of itself is just an emphatic form of in itself, meaning:
apart from any connexion with or relation to others; absolutely
The expression in ...
2
You could reverse the order at the end: hurting myself and others.
On the other hand, your perceived notion of awkwardness might stem from realizing that this is actually a proscribed use of myself for some people, because the subject and object fail to agree. You have moments as the subject, but myself as the object. You might make that easier by saying ...
1
The phrases have the same meaning.
In terms of something means "in relation to something" or "concerning something."
As far as something is concerned means "having to do with something; pertaining to something; as for something."
If you are wondering which to use, I would try them both out and go with whichever one sounds better with the particular ...
1
I'd prefer a colon here, e.g.:
Don't forget: They could be tricking us.
Perhaps an em-dash:
Don't forget — they could be tricking us.
A comma could be used here, as in the original example, but if feels loose.
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