When sentences are longer, they are divided into “thought groups.” Thought groups are words that naturally belong together as a grammatical unit. We instinctively pause between thought groups, although the pause is not as long as when there’s a comma or a period.

Here is an example of a sentence that is divided into two different thought groups:

“I like bacon and eggs ///early in the morning.” It’s natural to divide this sentence, and it sounds better than if you had said: “I like bacon and eggs early in the morning,” without pausing.

Within each thought group there is always one word that gets the most stress. That stressed word is called a “focus word.” The focus word is the word that carries the key information of the thought group. It’s usually the last content word within the thought group. For example, in the example sentence above, eggs and morning are the focus words.

There is some variation between different speakers regarding how often to pause within a longer sentence. People who speak quickly tend to pause less and their sentences have fewer thought groups.