Cleft Sentences: Controlling Focus with It and What Clauses

Advanced English is partly about information design: deciding what the listener already knows and what deserves special attention. Cleft sentences allow you to split one idea into two grammatical parts so that a particular person, time, reason or result receives stronger focus.

1. It-clefts

The common pattern is It + be + focused element + that/who clause.

• Neutral: Maria solved the problem.
• Focus on Maria: It was Maria who solved the problem.
• Focus on time: It was on Friday that the problem was finally solved.

The factual content is similar, but the information structure changes. The cleft tells the reader what to contrast with other possible choices.

2. What-clefts

A what-cleft often follows the pattern What + clause + be + focused information.

• What we need is a clearer definition.
• What surprised me most was the speed of the response.
• What the evidence does not show is causation.

This structure is particularly useful in presentations and academic writing because it lets you frame a complex point before delivering the key message.

3. All-clefts and the thing/reason constructions

English also uses related patterns such as All I want is…, The thing that concerns me is…, and The reason we changed the policy was…. They help guide the reader through a dense argument.

4. Clefts and contrast

Cleft sentences often correct an assumption: It wasn’t the cost that worried us; it was the lack of evidence. This is more precise than merely repeating not X but Y, because the grammatical structure itself signals contrast.

5. Avoiding artificial emphasis

Not every sentence deserves a cleft. Compare It was yesterday that I bought milk with the simpler I bought milk yesterday. Unless yesterday is genuinely contrastive, the cleft sounds unnecessarily dramatic. At C2, the question is not “Can I use a cleft?” but “What information problem does the cleft solve?”

6. Speaking and writing

In speech, clefts work with intonation: It was the SECOND proposal that convinced them. In writing, punctuation and surrounding context must make the contrast clear. Clefts are especially effective in conclusions, rebuttals and transitions between competing interpretations.

Practice

Rewrite the neutral sentence The lack of reliable data delayed the decision in March three times: focus on the cause, the action and the time. Then decide which version best suits (a) a formal report, (b) a spoken presentation and (c) a corrective response to someone who blamed the budget.