“When constructing sentences, put the most important word at the end.”
But my initial point was mostly that “the most impacting words” is a really awkward and unclear construction. And I think the disagreement in the responses to my comment as to which word would be the “most impacting” (and precisely what that means) rather bears me out.
Edit: Joseph Williams (who wrote
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace,
which lukeprog mentioned in the original post) has a subtler
version of this rule:
Put at the end of your sentence the newest, the most
surprising, the most significant information: information
that you want to stress—perhaps the information that
you will expand on in your next sentence.
That’s from page 48 of his
Style: Toward Clarity and Grace,
which I think blows Strunk and White out of the water. (I
believe it’s a different book from the one lukeprog
mentioned, though if so I’m sure they cover similar
material.)
I think “end” is the most important word here (though it maybe isn’t the most “impacting”), and it is about as close to the end as it can be.
“When constructing sentences, put the most important word at the end.”
But my initial point was mostly that “the most impacting words” is a really awkward and unclear construction. And I think the disagreement in the responses to my comment as to which word would be the “most impacting” (and precisely what that means) rather bears me out.
I agree. (I mistook your point.)
Edit: Joseph Williams (who wrote Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, which lukeprog mentioned in the original post) has a subtler version of this rule:
That’s from page 48 of his Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, which I think blows Strunk and White out of the water. (I believe it’s a different book from the one lukeprog mentioned, though if so I’m sure they cover similar material.)