The college curriculum involves a wide range of different assignments you will have to deal with. However, essays stand out from the rest with their multifaceted nature. You should keep in mind various details to create a masterpiece. Thus, when you work on a piece of writing, it is crucial to organize your thoughts to help your target audience understand your key points and ensure a quality reading experience. A good topic sentence runs the table at such a moment since it represents one of the fundamentals of an introductory paragraph. So, if you want to move your writing to a new level, you should know how to write a topic sentence effectively.
What Is a Topic Sentence?
If you are a newcomer to the academic environment, you may not know the answer to "What is a topic sentence?", so it is worth sorting things out. It represents an introductory sentence to a paragraph that provides readers with a clue about your paper. You cannot do without it working on essays that suggest changing subjects within the text. Thus, even though a topic sentence relates to your paper's key idea, it also serves as a guide for your readers, introducing the theme of a new paragraph. If you want to deliver an A-grade-worthy paper, you should know not just the answer to the question, "What is a topic sentence in an essay?" but also how to write it.
How to Write a Topic Sentence?
As you have already got, it is essential to know all the tricks on how to write a topic sentence for a paragraph to deliver a high-quality paper. It is not the easiest thing ever, but you can meet this challenge if you know the basic principles of writing. Just ensure that every topic sentence supports the arguments provided.
Write a Thesis Statement
If you want to develop an appropriate topic sentence, you should possess a powerful thesis statement. It is the cornerstone of the whole essay that summarizes its aim and argument.
Make an Essay Outline and Draft Topic Sentences
Making a well-crafted outline is the next important thing you should do. Take your time to think about the detailed composition of your essay and what information you want to present. It is perfect timing for making a rough draft of your topic sentence for body paragraph. Bear in mind that even though your topic sentences fall under the thesis statement, they should be more concrete.
Expand with Evidence
The topic sentence sets the tone of the whole paragraph, so you will enhance the latter with the help of credible evidence and good examples. Such an approach guarantees that all your words will apply to the key concept specified in the topic sentence.
Refine Your Topic Sentences
If you review the topic sentence examples, you will see that they start as ordinary statements in most cases. However, it is crucial to revise them in the process of writing to ensure that they match your paragraphs' content. How to write a topic sentence for a body paragraph? Make it specific enough to provide a clear idea of what your paragraph will deal with.
Tips for Writing a Topic Sentence
If you want to become good at writing catchy topic sentence starters, you will not do without pieces of advice that will help improve your skills in this regard. So, we've decided to have your back and prepared a few useful tips that may come in handy.
Use New Information
It is not enough to provide your target audience with obvious information that cannot evoke any interest. You should work on topic sentence ideas so the information specified doesn't look like an establishment of fact. Here is an illustrative topic sentence example:
- Fact: Instagram is a social network for sharing pics.
- Alternative improved option: Instagram has become one of the most popular social networks to share pictures, lifestyles, and dreams.
Make Your Topic Sentence Complex or Compound
When you resort to this trick, your topic sentence sounds more powerful and qualitative. You can create a compound sentence or a complex sentence. Here are a few examples:
- Compound sentence: Authorities claim that they do their best to address racism, but no changes are visible.
- Complex sentence: When we are united in partnership and overcome mistrust, we can achieve much more for each other.
Try Transition Words
To begin a new paragraph, you can use 'even though,' 'although,' and 'another' as transitional words. They may come in handy when you write a topic sentence for a support paragraph. In this case, an example of topic sentence may look the following:
- Another vote of no confidence allowed the Queen to appoint a different cabinet of monarchists.
- Even though the industrial piers were crippled, bombing continued throughout 1944.
Topic Sentences Are Used for Most Nonfiction Writing
If you sharpen your skills in writing well-crafted topic sentences, you will improve the quality of any nonfiction writing. It can be about working on various types of essays, for instance, persuasive or expository, blog posts, articles, speeches, etc.
Use a Topic Sentence Later in the Opening Paragraph
It is a misbelief that a topic sentence must be an introductory sentence. In the introduction, you can utilize it after the catchy phrase.
Mistakes Writing a Topic Sentence
Sometimes everything goes wrong just because you have turned a blind eye to some moments. While certain gaps may stay unnoticed, other mistakes can make a difference and negatively affect the outcome.
1. Missing or Unclear Thesis Statement
Many young people get into this trap due to their overestimation. Every academic paper should include a clear thesis statement in the first paragraph since the rest of your paper will spin around it.
2. Writing the Introduction Paragraph First
It is much harder to create a decent topic sentence when you start writing your paper with the introduction since your knowledge of the theme still leaves much to be desired.
3. Missing Topic Sentences in Body Paragraphs
Students are in a hurry to write down the body part of their paper, so they often miss transitions that help paragraphs flow correctly. Topic sentences serve as a magic wand in this case since they allow you to connect all the parts of your essay.
Summing Up
Every paper you write has a hidden goal you have to achieve to get a high grade. However, it is not enough to provide some information and follow grammar rules. You have to reach out to your audience with a qualitative text and guarantee a pleasant reading experience. Topic sentences are aimed at helping you achieve the key goal. Therefore, you should fill gaps in knowledge and sharpen your writing skills in this regard.
FAQ
Why Are Topic Sentences Important?
A well-tailored topic sentence provides readers with insight into what they can expect in a paragraph and helps them better understand the essence of your paper.
Where Does the Topic Sentence Go in a Paragraph?
Even though it is placed at the commencement of a paragraph in most cases, you can write it later in the introductory paragraph.
How Long Is a Topic Sentence?
Sometimes topic sentences can be two or even three sentences long.
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