Stresses in Writing
A Guide to Working with Stress
A Guide to Working with Stress
Stress means a certain quality of sound during a syllable. Syllables are the parts of words which are the building blocks for words. They are the individual parts of a word which have their own unique beginning and end, and usually consist of a beginning, and middle at the very least, but may also include an end. The middle is usually a vowel, so you can find syllables by breaking words up according to the vowels you hear. Those syllables then qualified in one of two ways: to be stressed, or to be unstressed. Every sentence is made up of many stressed and unstressed syllables, and each syllable in a word can be labeled either stressed, or unstressed.
If you look up information on stress in language you will discover that linguists talk about stress differently than writers, and even between prose and poetic writers, there is a difference. For linguists, stress usually means the parts of a sentence which is stressed, i.e. full words. For prose writers, it usually reflects inflection and tone. For poets, it comes down to the syllable as they work with beat and inflection.
In the study of language, measuring stress happens in three ways. The primary way is when a part of a word is said louder than other parts of itself, or other words nearby in the case of single syllable words. Words are considered stressed when they are "stronger" than the rest of the word or sentence. Something can considered stronger when a reader says it longer, louder, or higher. The last way in which stress can be indicated by a reader is through pitch, i.e. the final word in a question.
Index
Writers and Stress
The Poets
Prose Writers
The Linguists
Working with Stress
Meter Work
Adding Interest
Conclusion
Links
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