5 exercises — use it-clefts and wh-clefts to place precise emphasis in incident reports, architectural recommendations, and post-mortems.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
The team wants to emphasise that the N+1 query problem (not the network) caused the latency spike. Which cleft sentence achieves this?
"It was [X] that [verb phrase]" is the standard it-cleft structure that places emphatic focus on X. It is especially useful when correcting a misconception — "it was the N+1 query, not the network." Option A is grammatically fine but less emphatic. Option C has an incorrect comma after "was." Option D is not a valid cleft structure. It-clefts are common in post-mortems: "It was the missing index that caused the full table scan."
2 / 5
What ___ is a centralised secrets management solution — storing credentials in environment variables is not sufficient.
"What + subject + verb + is + [emphasis]" is the wh-cleft (pseudo-cleft) structure. "What we need is a centralised secrets management solution" — the "what" clause acts as the subject, and the emphasised element follows "is." "What is needed" would be a passive version (acceptable but less direct). "What do we need" is a question form, not a cleft. The wh-cleft is common in architectural recommendations: "What this system needs is better observability."
3 / 5
The reason ___ was that the health check endpoint was excluded from the load balancer's routing rules.
"The reason why [clause] was that [explanation]" is a reason-cleft structure emphasising the cause. It is heavily used in incident reports and root cause analyses. "The reason the service appeared healthy was that..." is also acceptable (omitting "why"), but option B correctly identifies the "why"-cleft form. This construction clearly separates the phenomenon (service appeared healthy) from its cause (excluded health check endpoint).
4 / 5
Which sentence uses a reverse wh-cleft (nominal cleft) correctly?
A reverse wh-cleft (or nominal cleft) puts the emphasis at the front: "[Emphasised element] is what [clause]." Option A: "Better monitoring is what the team needs most urgently" — emphasises "better monitoring." This is the opposite word order from a standard wh-cleft ("What the team needs most urgently is better monitoring") and gives slightly different rhythmic emphasis. Options B, C, and D are grammatically incorrect arrangements.
5 / 5
The architect wants to highlight WHEN the problem emerged. Which cleft sentence is correct?
In it-clefts, use "that" after the emphasised element — regardless of whether the element is a time, place, person, or thing: "It was [time/place/person/thing] THAT [clause]." Option B incorrectly uses "when" instead of "that" — a very common error. The rule is that "that" is used in the cleft structure; the original question word is not repeated in the cleft. Option C and D have incorrect word order that breaks the cleft construction.