What is a Topic Sentence?
A good topic sentence begins a paragraph in a way that clearly indicates the purpose of the paragraph. Here you are preparing your reader’s expectations regarding the content of your paragraph. Usually, a reader should be able to grasp your paragraph’s purpose by the close of the second sentence of a paragraph. Revising your topic sentences so that they properly signpost the work your paragraph will do is one of the key ways to transform an early exploratory draft into a draft tailored to the needs of your readers.
Why Topic Sentences?
The function of your topic sentences is to make clear to readers, at the outset, what purpose or idea guides a given paragraph. It is only when readers understand what the paragraph is trying to argue that they are put in a position to judge for themselves whether or not the evidence and/or logical reasoning in that paragraph is convincing to them.
A clear topic sentence will make it easy for your readers to follow the train of thought that led you to your good idea and, ultimately, to be persuaded by it.
On Topic Sentences:
The Four Major Types of Topic Sentences
While the examples might make it look easy to write excellent topic sentences, it can be tricky. Sometimes it can be very hard to consider the one clear idea that each paragraph has. However, there are some guideposts you can follow. GC Writing Center Director Dave Hershinow groups topic sentences into four major categories:
- Topic sentences that provide evidence to back up your central claim
- Topic sentences that respond to potential counterarguments
- Topic sentences that acknowledge complications or limitations in your central claim
- Topic sentences that point out further implications of your research
If we look again at the sample paragraph above, you’ll see that it is an instance of the first category. More specifically, it is a topic sentence that lets readers know that the paragraph is going to offer a second example in support of a claim (“The birth of bebop is another example of…”). This paragraph would only make sense when preceded by a paragraph or two that had been dealing with a first, presumably more primary example in support of the same claim. This kind of topic sentence helps readers understand the specific analytical purpose of each paragraph right at the outset, thereby putting readers in the best possible position to follow your analysis with intellectual rigor.
You can use the idea of these four major categories to help you as you write topic sentences. If you realize that you’re trying to accomplish one of these four major goals, it can help you narrow down the idea you’re trying to express and thus make it easier to write a great topic sentence. For example, if you understand that you’re trying to respond to a counterargument, it will be much easier to frame the topic sentence to show clearly what potential counterargument you are rejecting.
Of course, topic sentence writing is still hard! So is revising a draft to suit the needs of your readers. To get all the help you can with these important steps, visit your friends at The Writing Center to get free, one-on-one help with your writing.
Example of Topic Sentences Working Well
Take a look at the following paragraph:
In the early 1940s, the house band at Minton’s Playhouse played tunes at breakneck speeds to weed out unprepared musicians. The band frequently reharmonized jazz standards by replacing the original chords with similar chords that shared notes. Often, the band would change the key after every chorus and even increase the tempo after each key change. All but the most skilled musicians who sat in with the house band would be left behind by the radical deviations from standard jazz tempo, harmonies, and keys. The result of the house band’s unique style was that the musicians who played at Minton’s developed a new musical vocabulary for jazz: one that moved away from danceability to showcase the speed, rhythmic complexity, harmonic inventiveness, and soloing ability of the performers. The new style was called bebop.
While the individual sentences are intelligible, as readers, we can’t determine why the author is giving us all this information about jazz musicians in the 1940s. It’s only at the end of the paragraph that we start to see that the changes the author describes resulted in the birth of a new musical style.
Now with a topic sentence, we’ll see that the same paragraph starts to snap into place more easily:
The birth of bebop is another example of competition between musicians leading to the birth of a new musical style. In the early 1940s, the house band at Minton’s Playhouse played tunes at breakneck speeds to weed out unprepared musicians. The band frequently reharmonized jazz standards by replacing the original chords with similar chords that shared notes. Often, the band would change the key after every chorus and even increase the tempo after each key change. All but the most skilled musicians who sat in with the house band would be left behind by the radical deviations from standard jazz tempo, harmonies, and keys. The result of the house band’s unique style was that the musicians who played at Minton’s developed a new musical vocabulary for jazz: one that moved away from danceability to showcase the speed, rhythmic complexity, harmonic inventiveness, and soloing ability of the performers. The new style was called bebop.
We can now clearly see what the author wants us to understand about the topic. Now we can make sense of why the author gives us the facts about the musicians: to show how a new style grew into being.
Further Reading:
Purdue OWL has a lesson on topic sentences here.
Indiana University’s writing center has a strong lesson on topic sentences that, in particular, gives good ideas about how to transition from one paragraph to the next while staying mindful of clearly spelling out the function and