material and ending with a lack of luster often leaves us disappointed and destroys our sense of momentum.We do not start with the strawberry shortcake and work our way up to the broccoli. When the writer puts the emphatic material of a sentence in any place other than the stress position,one of two things can happen;both are bad.First,the reader might find the stress position occupied by material that clearly is not worthy of emphasis.In this case,the reader must discern,without any additional structural clue,what else in the sentence may be the most likely candidate for emphasis There are no secondary structural indications to fall back upon.In sentences that are long,dense or sophisticated,chances soar that the reader will not interpret the prose precisely as the writer intended. The second possibility is even worse:The reader may find the stress position occupied by something that does appear capable of receiving emphasis,even though the writer did not intend to give it any stress.In that case,the reader is highly likely to emphasize this imposter material,and the writer will have lost an important opportunity to influence the reader's interpretive process. The stress position can change in size from sentence to sentence.Sometimes it consists of a single word; sometimes it extends to several lines.The definitive factor is this:The stress position coincides with the moment of syntactic closure.A reader has reached the beginning of the stress position when she knows there is nothing left in the clause or sentence but the material presently being read.Thus a whole list, numbered and indented,can occupy the stress position of a sentence if it has been clearly announced as being all that remains of that sentence.Each member of that list,in turn,may have its own internal stress position,since each member may produce its own syntactic closure. Within a sentence,secondary stress positions can be formed by the appearance of a properly used colon or semicolon;by grammatical convention,the material preceding these punctuation marks must be able to stand by itself as a complete sentence.Thus,sentences can be extended effortlessly to dozens of words,as long as there is a medial syntactic closure for every piece of new,stress-worthy information along the way.One of our revisions of the initial sentence can serve as an example: The smallest of the URF's is URFA6L,a 207-nucleotide(nt)reading frame overlapping out of phase the NH-terminal portion of the adenosinetriphosphatase(ATPase)subunit 6 gene;it has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H-ATPase subunit 8 gene. By using a semicolon,we created a second stress position to accommodate a second piece of information that seemed to require emphasis. We now have three rhetorical principles based on reader expectations:First,grammatical subjects should be followed as soon as possible by their verbs;second,every unit of discourse,no matter the size,should serve a single function or make a single point;and,third,information intended to be emphasized should appear at points of syntactic closure.Using these principles,we can begin to unravel the problems of our example prose. Note the subject-verb separation in the 62-word third sentence of the original passage: Recently,however,immunoprecipitation experiments with antibodies to purified, rotenone-sensitive NADH-ubiquinone oxido-reductase [hereafter referred to as respiratory chain NADH dehydrogenase or complex I]from bovine heart,as well as enzyme fractionation studies, have indicated that six human URF's(that is,URF1,URF2,URF3,URF4,URF4L,and URF5,material and ending with a lack of luster often leaves us disappointed and destroys our sense of momentum. We do not start with the strawberry shortcake and work our way up to the broccoli. When the writer puts the emphatic material of a sentence in any place other than the stress position, one of two things can happen; both are bad. First, the reader might find the stress position occupied by material that clearly is not worthy of emphasis. In this case, the reader must discern, without any additional structural clue, what else in the sentence may be the most likely candidate for emphasis. There are no secondary structural indications to fall back upon. In sentences that are long, dense or sophisticated, chances soar that the reader will not interpret the prose precisely as the writer intended. The second possibility is even worse: The reader may find the stress position occupied by something that does appear capable of receiving emphasis, even though the writer did not intend to give it any stress. In that case, the reader is highly likely to emphasize this imposter material, and the writer will have lost an important opportunity to influence the reader’s interpretive process. The stress position can change in size from sentence to sentence. Sometimes it consists of a single word; sometimes it extends to several lines. The definitive factor is this: The stress position coincides with the moment of syntactic closure. A reader has reached the beginning of the stress position when she knows there is nothing left in the clause or sentence but the material presently being read. Thus a whole list, numbered and indented, can occupy the stress position of a sentence if it has been clearly announced as being all that remains of that sentence. Each member of that list, in turn, may have its own internal stress position, since each member may produce its own syntactic closure. Within a sentence, secondary stress positions can be formed by the appearance of a properly used colon or semicolon; by grammatical convention, the material preceding these punctuation marks must be able to stand by itself as a complete sentence. Thus, sentences can be extended effortlessly to dozens of words, as long as there is a medial syntactic closure for every piece of new, stress-worthy information along the way. One of our revisions of the initial sentence can serve as an example: The smallest of the URF’s is URFA6L, a 207-nucleotide (nt) reading frame overlapping out of phase the NH2 -terminal portion of the adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) subunit 6 gene; it has been identified as the animal equivalent of the recently discovered yeast H+ -ATPase subunit 8 gene. By using a semicolon, we created a second stress position to accommodate a second piece of information that seemed to require emphasis. We now have three rhetorical principles based on reader expectations: First, grammatical subjects should be followed as soon as possible by their verbs; second, every unit of discourse, no matter the size, should serve a single function or make a single point; and, third, information intended to be emphasized should appear at points of syntactic closure. Using these principles, we can begin to unravel the problems of our example prose. Note the subject-verb separation in the 62-word third sentence of the original passage: Recently, however, immunoprecipitation experiments with antibodies to purified, rotenone-sensitive NADH-ubiquinone oxido-reductase [hereafter referred to as respiratory chain NADH dehydrogenase or complex I] from bovine heart, as well as enzyme fractionation studies, have indicated that six human URF’s (that is, URF1, URF2, URF3, URF4, URF4L, and URF5