Study materials
These three sentences report one fact and answer three different questions.
Maya solved the problem on Friday.
On Friday, Maya solved the problem.
The problem was solved on Friday.
The reader never asks these questions aloud, and yet that is what they follow. Word order is how the questions get set.
Two principles that govern the order
Two independent principles work on top of the subject-verb frame, and they sometimes pull against each other.
The first: given at the front, new at the end. The second: light at the front, heavy at the end.
A man we had met at the conference last spring came in.
In came a man we had met at the conference last spring.
When the principles conflict, the first wins. Readers tolerate a long sentence more easily than new information at the front.
Every sentence answers an unasked question
Word order shows which question you are answering. The reader never asked it, and yet that is what they are tracking.
Maya solved the problem.
The problem was solved by Maya.
It was Maya who solved the problem.
So editing word order is above all a check: does my sentence imply the question I actually want to answer?
Where it breaks down
The first failure: the new information has landed at the front.
A completely different approach was proposed by the auditors.
The second: the heavy element has stayed in the middle.
The question of whether the data had been verified independently arose.
The third: the sentence answers the wrong question.
It was Maya who solved the problem.
All three are caught by one question. What unasked question does this sentence answer, and is it the one my reader had?
Try it right now
Take one sentence and rebuild it three ways so that each version answers a different question.
Then put each version into a two-sentence context and see which one actually fits.