If we had to choose between these two sentences, which would it be: Her intelligence I never doubted or Her intelligence was never in doubt. The challenge, I admit, is unfair, because we have neither a context nor an intention by which to decide which of these two sentences is the better choice. Still, there are rhetorical differences between them, and understanding how one differs from the other can help us craft sentences better suited to occasions we might find ourselves writing about.
At first sight, the first sentence will probably strike us as a bit unusual. The standard word order in English for a declarative sentence is subject + verb + direct object if the verb is transitive. This SVO pattern is the one we most often expect in the basic communication of facts and ideas, but if we use this regular pattern in analyzing our first sentence, we find that a different arrangement obtains: the order of the elements is instead OSV, with the direct object of the verb assuming the all-important first position of the statement. Using the regular technique of isolating the subject from its predicate with a vertical bar, we see that her intelligence, which is the direct object of the transitive verb doubted appears in the subject phrase along with the actual subject I: Her intelligence I | never doubted. So why would one do this?
The OSV arrangement represents what is called an inverted word order, where the position of an element has been reversed; here the direct object has moved from following its transitive verb to the first position of the sentence. Inversion is one of many such rhetorical figures (think configurations) which we can use to shape a sentence more closely to the audience and purpose we have in mind. What the reader sees or the listener hears first will be the most emphatic, and so to employ an inverted word order effectively (and avoid a studied and obvious tone), the context must be such that it is important to bring special attention to the opening idea. We might imagine, for example, that the person speaking or writing this sentence had just been accused of thinking that the person in question was not capable of understanding some difficult problem or circumstance, and so to clear up that unfortunate misunderstanding, he has moved the idea of her intelligence to the foremost position in order to isolate it sharply and underscore the truth.
In contrast to this style, the second sentence returns to the standard SV order, making now the same two words, her intelligence, the subject, not the object, of the verb. Note that we can only call this an SV order because the verb was is not transitive, and so there is no direct object in this clause. The word never and the phrase in doubt complete the predicate, but neither is part of any action; instead, in the absence of a subject doing something (as I never doubted in the first sentence), the subject here is merely described, the phrase in doubt functioning as the adjective doubted. The verb was, then, is a copula, linking the subject her intelligence with what is effectively an adjective negated by the adverb never: Her intelligence was never doubted. (There’s a bit more going on here, but this analysis will suffice to make my point.)
And so the difference between the two sentences is really the difference between an action emphatically asserted and a quality routinely described. The rhetorical structures are unalike, and what we’ve noted here about their styles is the best we can do to evaluate the two statements side by side, because rhetoric, in contrast to logic, does not answer to the criterion of correct or incorrect, but to the benchmark of appropriate or inappropriate to the effect intended. We like the rules of grammar and logic because the measure is objective and transgressions can be quickly marked. Rhetoric, though, requires a finer tool, a more penetrating perception of both circumstance and intent, and that faculty requires time and patience and ever fuller awareness to acquire. The old word for it was perspicacity, which was thought, by some, to be the real work of the language arts—grammar and logic and rhetoric—to awaken. And once awake, to see what’s difficult to say.
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