All Hail the Topic Sentence

Image from: Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy

I write often about best practices in the classroom. I am especially concerned with the art of writing history - and when it comes to my students, I implore them to think carefully about how they write. There is indeed value in a clear, concise, well-argued essay. You might have seen my thoughts on introductions on Instagram…and I have offered more detailed musings here on this website.

If you saw the Instagram story, you’ll note that in my sketch on introductions I included a section on laying out the three mains points of argumentation - a “roadmap” as it were. For example, in a five-paragraph essay, what I often assign to my freshmen, one needs three clear points supporting a thesis statement in the introduction. Now…each of the introductory points will be the foundation for a paragraph topic sentence - setting up the paragraph and supported by specific evidence. Your reader should be able to click these sentences off as stated points illustrating your stated thesis. Neat trick, yes?

If you want to improve your writing by a zillion times, just take care to provide clear topic sentences for each paragraph that lead your reader straight back to the thesis. And you can do this for an essay of any size - just be sure to organize the paper in a logical manner. Guess what, I’ll be talking about organization and outlining next - so stay tuned.

With compliments,

Keith