did they find her?
(Du Maurier) Can I show you my library?
(Greene) N o t e. — No inversion is used when the interrogative word is the subject of
the sentence or an attribute to the subject:
Who is in the room? Who speaks English here? What photos are lying on the table? 2. Sentences introduced by
there. There
is nothing marvellous in what Jam is going to relate.
(Dickens) Into the lane where he sat there
opened three or four garden gates .
(Dickens) 3. Compound sentences, their second part beginning with
so or
neither. “Most of these military men are good shots,” observed Mr. Snod-grass,
calmly; “but so
are you, ain’t you?”
(Dickens) Their parents, Mr. and Mrs. R., escaped unhurt, so
did three of their sons .
(Daily Worker) 4. Simple exclamatory sentences expressing wish.
Be it so!
Gentle reader,
may you never feel what I then felt.
May your eyes never shed
such stormy, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine.
(Ch. Bronte) § 4. The inverted order of words is widely used when a word or a group of words is put in a
prominent position, i. e. when it either opens the sentence or is withdrawn to the end of the
sentence so as to produce a greater effect. So word order often becomes a means of emphasis,
thus acquiring a stylistic function.
In this case inversion is not due to the structure of the sentence but to the author’s wish to
produce a certain stylistic effect.
1. Inversion occurs when an adverbial modifier opens the sentence.
Here we must distinguish the following cases:
(a) Adverbial modifiers expressed by a phrase or phrases open the sentence, and the subject
often has a lengthy modifier.
In an open barouche, the horses of which had been taken out,
