Brown Belt
Inversion, cleft sentences, participle clauses, and the discourse markers of formal writing.
Fronting a negative forces subject–auxiliary inversion, just like in a question.
Splitting one idea into two clauses to focus and emphasize.
Omitting if by inverting the subject and auxiliary.
-ing/-ed and having + participle to combine clauses concisely.
Dropping the relative pronoun + be to shorten clauses.
Base form after suggest/insist/demand/recommend/essential that.
Needn't have vs. didn't need to, and other modal-perfect nuance.
Was going to / would for plans viewed from a past moment.
Preposition + whom/which vs. stranded prepositions; quantifier + of which.
Adding do/does/did to an already affirmative verb to stress truth or contrast.
Moving objects and complements to the front shifts focus but does not always trigger inversion.
Very and absolutely don't combine with the same adjectives.
The behaves differently across names, places, institutions and abstractions.
Linking ideas formally with nonetheless, thereby, hence, whereby.
Turning verbs and adjectives into nouns for formal, dense style.
Preference, advice and urgency followed by past or base forms.
Informal/eventive get-passive vs. neutral be-passive.
Softening claims with modals, adverbs and reporting verbs.