Practice using it-cleft and wh-cleft sentences to add emphasis in technical writing, incident reports, and design discussions.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence uses an it-cleft correctly to emphasise the cause of the performance issue?
An it-cleft (It is X that/who Y) moves the emphasised element into focus. Option B highlights the database query as the key cause. Option C is a wh-cleft, also correct but different structure.
2 / 5
A team is writing a post-mortem. Which wh-cleft sentence best emphasises the solution that resolved the incident?
A wh-cleft (What + clause + was + noun phrase) emphasises the key fact. What resolved the incident was... focuses attention on the solution, common in post-mortems.
3 / 5
A stakeholder asks why the deployment took so long. Which it-cleft answer emphasises the bottleneck most clearly?
It is X that Y is the standard it-cleft pattern. It is the test suite that is causing... focuses exactly on what the stakeholder asked about.
4 / 5
An RFC proposes a major architectural change. Which sentence uses What + happened to narrate the motivation?
What happened was that... is a wh-cleft pattern used to narrate events and motivations. It adds dramatic emphasis to the sequence of events that led to the proposal.
5 / 5
Which sentence uses a reverse wh-cleft (noun phrase + is what + clause) correctly?
A reverse wh-cleft places the topic (rollback mechanism) first: A rollback mechanism is what we need. This emphasises the noun phrase at the start, contrasting with the standard wh-cleft (What we need is...).