What Is A Topic Sentence In An Essay: Common Approaches


The topic sentence of your essay is the sentence that tells your reader what you essay is about. It has to grab their attention and tell them all they need to know about your topic. When you are going to create your topic sentence, there are a few ways that you can approach it, it doesn’t matter which way you use but these suggestions should be able to help you to compose your topic sentence.

Common Approaches

  • You can create a great topic sentence by using a power number in it. Words like various, many, several, some, or an actually number can make a great sentence.
  • Always use and answer when, where, what, and who in your topic sentence.
  • Make it a position statement, this means you need to introduce a problem and how to solve it.
  • However is also a great way to start out your topic sentence. Or use another adverb like, as a result, in fact, still, next, or furthermore.
  • And, Or, and but are also something that you can use in your topic sentence.
  • Make your topic sentence about a list of things. Like listing the needs of a group of people, describe them using a list.
  • Use your topic sentence to get the readers attention. This can be usually done with a fact or statistic that is shocking or fun.

Topic sentences are different than a thesis statement, which goes in your introduction. Topic sentences are the sentences that are in every paragraph of the body paragraphs. These sentences tell the reader what they will be learning that that particular paragraph. You could look at these at the thesis statements of each paragraph. Your topic sentence has to be clear or you will lose your reader.

To compose a great topic sentence it has to answer all of the questions of when, where, what, and who to be complete. If you leave out one of these elements then the sentence won’t make very much sense. And the reader won’t have all of the information that they need to understand your paragraph. It takes practice to create great topic sentences but you can get some help online if you need it. There are worksheets on most school websites that will help you create topic sentences or at least give your practice writing them. This will ensure that your ones for your essay will be great.