essay help

How to Write a Topic Sentence for an Essay That Will Make the Whole Paper Shine


A topic sentence is one of the most important parts of your essay. It must present the main idea you want to express in a paragraph.

In order to make an impact, a topic sentence must be able to:

  • Introduce the idea in a clear and concise manner.
  • Include some words from the title to deepen the connection between the two.
  • Hint what the rest of the work will be focused on.

It’s imperative that you provide some supporting evidence after the topic sentence. This justification is required to enhance its impact.

The following tips should help you write a topic sentence that will make your essay stand out.

  • Keep it short.
  • Your topic sentence should be focused on an idea, and every word in it must serve some purpose. Any unnecessary information will reduce the effect it will have on the reader.

    Keep your language clear and don’t overuse phrasal verbs.

  • Make it understandable.
  • Bear in mind that not all people reading your essay may be proficient in the subject of your study. This means that it’s essential to keep the topic sentence simple and easy to understand even to people who are new to the field.

  • Experiment with formats.
  • It’s not mandatory to make your topic sentence the first one in the paragraph. Try to experiment placing it a bit further. This may help to enhance the effect.

    However, remember that the sentence should be close to the beginning of the paragraph.

  • Use transition words.
  • When you are writing several topic sentences for sub-paragraphs, you should use transition words, like “next”, “first”, “final”, etc. This will help the readers follow the logical development of your arguments.

  • Hook the readers.
  • Add something that will help you grab the audience’s attention and make them want to continue reading. This can be an emotional description of characters, dialogue, portraying of emotions, using sensory details, etc.

  • Don’t be rhetoric.
  • It’s imperative that you avoid rhetoric questions when writing a topic sentence. It may seem like a question will have more impact on the audience, but this isn’t so. Rhetoric questions do not require answers. Thus, there will be no point for people to continue reading the essay.

  • Don’t use your artillery.
  • While it’s important to express your opinion and back it up, you shouldn’t include any solid facts in the topic sentence. They will not be able to keep the readers’ interest, because there will be no point in continuing to read when they already know the most important thing.

Learn more

Testimonials

  • Thank you so much for helping me write my IB extended essay. I am a foreign student and had a problem writing such a big and complex paper on my own. I was even planning to pay a professional writing service to have it written but my budget was too small. I will definitely recommend your blog to all of my friends.

  • At first I could not believe this academic resource does not charge for help. There are plenty of essay writing guides, tutorials and how-to's that any student can use to build a better paper. I appreciate all you've done for me.

  • I was looking for a free term paper sample as I am not quite good at formatting and found it here.

#