5 exercises — It-cleft and Wh-cleft structures for highlighting key information in design docs, post-mortems, and proposals.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence uses an It-cleft to correctly emphasise the cache as the cause of the bottleneck?
It-cleft structure:"It is [focused element] that/who [rest of sentence]." The cleft moves the cache to the focal position, giving it strong emphasis. Compare: "The cache causes the bottleneck" (neutral) vs. "It is the cache that causes the bottleneck" (the cache is the key new information — contrasting it with other potential causes). Clefts are used in technical communication when you want to isolate and highlight one specific element: "It is the connection pool size that limits throughput", "It was the missing index that caused the slowdown." Options C and D are grammatically incorrect.
2 / 5
A design doc needs to emphasise that a shared interface — not implementation details — is what the team requires. Which sentence is the correct Wh-cleft?
Wh-cleft structure:"What [subject + verb] is [focused element]." The Wh-cleft structure puts the emphasis on the element after "is": "What we need is a shared interface" — the interface is the key point. Wh-clefts are extremely useful in technical proposals: "What the system requires is a stateless authentication mechanism", "What this decision affects is the deployment pipeline", "What surprised the team was the memory footprint." The Wh-cleft is more natural and less formal than the It-cleft in engineering discussions. Options A, C, and D are grammatically incorrect.
3 / 5
When should a technical writer prefer a cleft sentence over a simple sentence?
Cleft sentences add contrastive or informational focus — they are appropriate when one element is being singled out as the key piece of new information, especially when contrasting it with what the audience might have assumed. Example: a team investigating a production issue has ruled out the database and the network. The writer says: "It is the message queue that is causing the delay" — this emphasises the message queue against the already-considered alternatives. Overusing clefts makes text feel heavy. Simple sentences are better for routine statements. Clefts should be used purposefully, not as a default style. Commit messages should be concise — clefts are rarely appropriate there.
4 / 5
Which cleft sentence is grammatically correct and natural in a technical post-mortem?
"It was the deployment script that introduced the regression" is the correct It-cleft: It + was/is + [focused noun phrase] + that/who + [verb phrase]. Using "that" is standard in It-clefts for things; "who" for people. Option B incorrectly inserts "it" before "introduced." Option C omits the relative pronoun "that." Option D inverts the structure incorrectly. In post-mortems, It-clefts are useful for pinpointing root causes: "It was the missing health check that prevented automatic failover", "It was the stale cache entry that caused the data inconsistency."
5 / 5
A technical writer reviews this sentence: "It is important that we document the API contract." Is this an It-cleft?
No — this is extraposition, not a cleft. The sentence "It is important that we document the API contract" uses a preparatory "it" to front-shift the subject clause ("that we document…") — this is called extraposition. It-clefts require the pattern: It is [noun phrase] that [verb phrase] — the focused element must be a noun or noun phrase, not an adjective. Compare: "It is the API contract that we must document" (cleft — noun phrase focused) vs. "It is important that we document the API contract" (extraposition — adjective predicate). Confusing these two is a common error in technical writing analysis. Both are grammatical; they serve different functions.