Let's teach Lopdo (and others) English

[Autumnwolf17]

Are you trying to teach Lopdo to lie in English?

None of what I said would help Lopdo to lie in English.

[Lopdo]

English is more about word order than stressing. If you're writing informally, then you could get away with underlining the word that to stress it, but it's the only way in your example.

I was thinking more about spoken form, so the underlying doesn't really work there

Of course, one sentence doesn't live on its own, and sentences prior to this sentence influences the meaning and objectification of the current sentence. In your example, if the two people were talking primarily about actions, then the object word 'that' would naturally be more important. But if the two people were focused on the guy prior to the sentence, then the sentence would be naturally focused on the word 'him'.

Not sure if the context is that important in this case, but the more I think about it, more I believe you might be right. This look like very sensitive stuff that can be easily misinterpreted (but that might be intentional in this kind of sentence structure )

If you want to put focus on something with a sentence like that, you just stress it, at least when speaking. To use another example sentence: "I did not tell her that", I can change the stress to give different meanings. (Italicized words are used to show the word that is stressed)

I did not tell her that. (Implies someone else told her)
[snip]
I did not tell her that. (Implies you told her something else)

I know about this, and it's pretty clear to anyone who speaks English to some degree (I think). I was more interested in some real changes to that sentence, not just the way you emphasize separate words

[Autumnwolf17]

I can't think of anything in particular.