Moving a piece of a sentence to the front changes what gets emphasised — without changing the facts.

Notice

  • Fronted adverbial: “Down the street he ran, faster than he’d ever run before.”
  • Fronted object: “Money, I have plenty of; time, I don’t.”
  • Fronted complement: “Happy, she was not.”

Rule

Rule: fronting takes an element that would normally come later in the sentence and puts it first, usually for emphasis, contrast, or literary effect. It is more common in writing and formal/literary speech than everyday conversation, and often triggers subject-auxiliary inversion (as in “Happy, she was not” — though not always, as in the object-fronting example).

Practice

  1. Rewrite with fronting for emphasis: “He had never seen such devotion in the mountains.” (front “in the mountains”)
    Answer: “In the mountains, he had never seen such devotion.”
  2. What effect does fronting “money” in “Money, I have plenty of” create?
    Answer: It puts strong contrastive emphasis on “money” (as opposed to time), highlighting the contrast between the two.
  3. Is fronting more typical of casual conversation or formal/literary writing?
    Answer: Formal and literary writing — it is a stylistic device less common in everyday casual speech.

Connect

Practise fronting patterns with the Grammar Quiz.

Try Grammar Quiz →

CEFR: C2

Azizul Hakim
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