Once it wanders too far away from the essence of the question, pull yourself back in and redirect and refocus your writing to the origin of the question.
She looked at him mutely, as if not quite grasping the essence of the question.
"The essence of your question," Susannah says, "is, is it that important?
Christie again stepped in to note that Rubio had not answered the essence of the question – over whether he had shown effective leadership on the issue of immigration.
NAME WITHHELD, LOS ANGELES Before addressing the essence of your question, let's look at the specific example you cite: if you presume people are fundamentally good, you're taking for granted that the umbrella theft was accidental.
"Because it got to the essence of the question, which is: 'Where are we in the history of cancer and how did we get here'?" Finalists:"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain," by Nicholas Carr (W.W. Norton & Company); "Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History," by S.C. Gwynne (Scribner).
Other parts simply did not understand the essence of the question.
If you go to the essence of the question, what is it that you are trying to achieve, and we in the health care industry should be trying to achieve to keep the patient away from the hospital, not into the hospital.
To reduce patient burden, we subsequently surveyed patients about a single item measure, "I know what questions to ask my doctor," which we felt captured the essence of our question-listing program.
But time is of the essence: the question of what the Electoral College should do has a clock ticking loudly on it.
