Stylistic inversion — Your Brain Was Not Built for Bliss
Grammar: Inversion
Free ESL grammar exercise on stylistic inversion themed around your brain was not built for bliss. Printable worksheet from EnglishPlans.com.
What's on this worksheet
A Level 6 (proficiency) ESL grammar exercise on psychology, practising inversion. The worksheet has a short reading excerpt, a grammar reference and graded practice items.
From the reading
Gone is the comfortable assumption that well-being is simply a matter of accumulating good moments. Such is the paradox at the heart of Kahneman's most unsettling finding. Seldom does empirical science land so directly on philosophical prescription as it does here.
Grammar: Inversion
- Fronted predicative
- Gone is the comfortable assumption that happiness accumulates. — subject follows predicative adjective/past participle for emphasis
- Such / So inversion
- Such is the paradox that even philosophers hesitate. — fronted such or so inverts subject and verb for rhetorical punch
Sample items
- ______ any certainty that the experiencing self governs our choices. (fronted predicative: 'Gone')
- ______ the power of hedonic adaptation that a pay rise becomes invisible within months.
- ______ does equanimity feel as elusive as it does when a psychologist hands you data.
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