What are your chances of acceptance?
Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.
Your chancing factors
Extracurriculars.
How to Write a Strong Topic Sentence + Examples
Do you know how to improve your profile for college applications.
See how your profile ranks among thousands of other students using CollegeVine. Calculate your chances at your dream schools and learn what areas you need to improve right now — it only takes 3 minutes and it's 100% free.
Show me what areas I need to improve
What’s Covered:
- What Is a Topic Sentence?
- 5 Steps to Writing a Good Topic Sentence
Elements of a Good Topic Sentence
Common pitfalls to avoid.
- Where To Get Your Essay Edited For Free
Crafting the perfect essay takes time and dedication. There are so many elements you have to worry about, such as tone, purpose, and correct spelling and grammar. Writing a strong topic sentences is another critical part in writing a cohesive essay.
Without a strong topic sentence, you risk losing your reader and perhaps part of your grade. If it’s a college admissions essay, then you need it to be as strong as possible to back up your application. Learn about what steps you should take to write a strong topic sentence.
What Is a Topic Sentence?
People often confuse a topic sentence with a thesis statement. A thesis statement is typically at the end of your opening paragraph, that dictates the main argument you’ll be making in your essay.
Throughout your essay, you’ll have multiple topic sentences, as each paragraph should start off with one. This beginning sentence is used to direct the topic of the paragraph and outline the flow of the following sentences. It’s used to help guide your reader and to continue to keep them hooked on your overall essay. Without topic sentences, your essay will be unorganized, lack transitions, and sound very choppy. To write a good topic sentence, there are several steps to take.
Writing a Good Topic Sentence: 5 Steps
Step 1: decide what you’re going to write about..
When you see the essay prompt, you’ll have some time to think through what you want to say and why. You have to decide if it’s a persuasive essay, informative, narrative, or descriptive. Determine your purpose for writing the essay after reading through the prompt. Whether it’s an assignment for school or if it’s to get into college, you need to make sure you have that purpose clearly outlined.
Step 2: Create a thesis statement.
One of the first things you need to do is create a thesis statement. This is typically a sentence with three points that you’ll back up throughout your essay.
For example: The Office became a cultural phenomenon because it spurred the careers of many of today’s successful movie stars, it talked about situations that most American workers can relate to, and even 15 years later, offers funny, relevant content that helps to break down prejudices.
You then use that thesis statement to create an essay around the points you want to make.
Step 3: Make your essay outline.
Once you have the points you want to make within your thesis statement hammered out, make an outline for your essay. This is where you’ll start to create your topic sentence for each paragraph. You want to clearly state the main idea of that paragraph in the very first sentence. From there, you back up that main idea with facts and reputable sources. Make sure your topic sentence is clear, but does not just announce your topic.
For example, do not write something like: “In this paragraph, I will discuss why it’s bad that poachers are killing giraffes.”
Instead, write something that clearly states your idea with a reasonable opinion and that gives direction to the paragraph: “Giraffes are a key part of the African ecosystem, so it’s important to enforce regulations against the poachers who are killing them for their body parts.”
You’d then follow that up with reasons why giraffes are a key part of the African ecosystem and how poachers are destroying their population.
Step 4: Begin writing your essay.
Once you have your thesis statement and you’ve created an outline with supporting paragraphs and their topic sentences, you can begin writing your essay. It’s important to make that outline before just jumping in–a disorganized essay can spell disaster for you as you continue to write, and could result in a poor grade. Many times, teachers will even require you to turn in your outline as part of your overall essay grade.
Step 5: Proofread and check your resources.
After you’ve written the essay, go back through it with a fine tooth comb. Read through each topic sentence and the paragraphs that follow to ensure that you’ve written clear, solid topic sentences throughout and that the paragraphs with them make sense. During the proofreading phase, you also need to recheck the sources you’re using. Make sure each source is reputable. In other words, do not use sites like Wikipedia where anyone can go in and edit an article to add misinformation. Use sites that:
- Are actual reputable news sources, such as the New York Times , CNN, CBS News
- Have domain names that end in .edu or .gov
- Come from an encyclopedia, such as Encyclopedia Britannica
Using sites that are not reputable could jeopardize the validity of your argument.
Discover your chances at hundreds of schools
Our free chancing engine takes into account your history, background, test scores, and extracurricular activities to show you your real chances of admission—and how to improve them.
Now that you know the steps to set yourself up for success when writing a topic sentence, there are certain elements that go into a quality first sentence. Always make sure that your topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph. You don’t want to make your reader hunt for the point you’re trying to make. Check out some key elements of a good topic sentence:
Make sure your topic sentence isn’t too vague.
You need a topic sentence that has some specifics to it. It also needs to hook in your reader in some way with an opinion. A vague sentence makes it harder to write a paragraph that can clearly backs up your thoughts. For example:
DON’T: “In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bingley seems like a nice guy.”
DO: “When Mr. Bingley is first introduced, he comes across as a kind person because he speaks to everyone and doesn’t immediately pass judgment.”
Choose a reasonable opinion.
Your topic sentence should clearly outline whatever point you’re trying to make in the paragraph, but you want to pick a reasonable opinion that you can easily reinforce with facts and statistics. Here’s an example of what you should and should not do:
DON’T: “It’s obvious that Mr. Bingley was a total loser with no backbone.”
DO: “Mr. Bingley could have shown more confidence in his choices and stood up to Mr. Darcy when he found himself in love with Jane Bennet.”
You can then back that up with facts, saying that he was a wealthy Englishman and thus one of the key players in society at the time, which should have given him more confidence. If he’d been more confident, perhaps he would not have left and devastated Jane.
Use your topic sentence as a transition.
Along with telling the reader the point of your next paragraph, your topic sentence should also serve as a transition from the previous paragraph. Without a transition, the essay can feel like it’s choppy and disjointed. For example:
DON’T: “Mr. Bingley is a good man and here’s why.”
DO: “Although Mr. Bingley did break Jane’s heart by leaving, he ended up redeeming himself by returning to Netherfield Hall.”
Keep your topic sentence short.
A long, drawn-out topic sentence can risk losing your reader. Many times, it’s hard to determine the point of a sentence when it goes on for too long. You want a clear, concise sentence that draws in the reader but also leaves some room for you to expand on it in the following paragraph.
DON’T: “Throughout the novel of Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bingley was often quite different from Mr. Darcy as he would treat all people in a friendly manner, considering them all his friends and acquaintances, even agreeing to throw a ball after Elizabeth’s sisters rudely demanded he do so and was gracious to Mr. and Mrs. Bennet as well despite their manners.”
DO: “Overall, Mr. Bingley served as a foil to Mr. Darcy throughout the story by treating everyone around him equally with dignity and grace.”
Writing an essay can be overwhelming at times, but so long as you avoid some of these common pitfalls, it can be easier to get it done on time.
Don’t wait until the last minute.
If your teacher assigns you an essay or tells you that you have an essay test coming up, don’t wait until the day before to do anything about it. You have to plan or study and you need to give yourself time to do that. If you know it takes you a while to write something, then start planning it as soon as you get the assignment.
Don’t forget to write an outline.
Along with planning, make sure you have that outline written up and planned out well. It will serve as your guideline for writing the essay. Without it, you’ll face the risk of a disorganized essay that does not clearly illustrate your point.
Ask for help if you need it.
This may be the most important pitfall to avoid. If you get in over your head while writing, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Ask a friend to review the essay or ask your teacher for guidance.
Where to Get Your Essay Edited for Free
Once you’ve finished your essay, you may want additional input. There are tools out there to help, but CollegeVine’s free peer essay review tool can provide you with actionable feedback from students just like you. CollegeVine’s tool has helped many students and may be able to help you, too! Asking for peer feedback can help to refine your essay and it never hurts to have an extra set of eyes read through what you’ve written. Check out the free tool today!
Related CollegeVine Blog Posts
- Study Documents
- Learning Tools
Writing Guides
- Citation Generator
- Flash Card Generator
- Homework Help
- Essay Examples
- Essay Title Generator
- Essay Topic Generator
- Essay Outline Generator
- Flashcard Generator
- Plagiarism Checker
- Paraphrasing Tool
- Conclusion Generator
- Thesis Statement Generator
- Introduction Generator
- Literature Review Generator
- Hypothesis Generator
- Human Editing Service
- Essay Hook Generator
Writing Guides / 10 Effective Topic Sentence Examples for Engaging Essays
10 Effective Topic Sentence Examples for Engaging Essays
Writing an effective topic sentence is trickier than it appears. You want a sentence that grabs the reader’s attention and tells them what to expect from the essay. You also need the sentence to be concise and clear. Plus, it is not enough to develop a single topic sentence. You need a topic sentence for each paragraph in your essay. These sentences serve as guideposts, helping your reader quickly and reliably navigate your essay. No wonder writing effective topic sentences is crucial to a good essay.
What is a Topic Sentence?
A topic sentence is a sentence that tells the main point of a paragraph. Typically, it is the first sentence in the section. However, you might use a different hook, making the topic sentence the second or third. Some professors refer to topic sentences as focus sentences. That is a great way to think about them because the paragraph should focus on the information in the topic sentence.
In expository writing, each paragraph should have a topic sentence. In addition, the topic sentence in your introductory paragraph should focus on the entire essay. What is the paper’s topic, and what approach will the author take in the paper? The reader should be able to answer those questions by reading the topic sentence.
While a topic sentence needs to provide a focus for your essay or paragraph, you want to avoid making it too narrow. Instead, you want to give the reader a general idea of your topic. The topic sentences in your supporting paragraphs can be more limited because the focus in each supporting section will concentrate on bolstering the point you are making in that paragraph. However, the topic sentence for the entire essay needs to be sufficiently broad to let you introduce all of the supporting paragraphs.
Topic Sentence Structure
Structuring an essay is one of the most critical roles for a topic sentence. Suppose you are a person who outlines your papers before writing them. In that case, your topic sentences should be able to provide the skeleton of your essay. They are too broad or narrow if they cannot, so you will want to adjust them accordingly. So, one of the answers to “What’s a topic sentence?” is a skeleton. With your topic sentences, outlining your essay should be easy. You can also go in the opposite direction. Writing your topic sentences should also be easier if you have outlined your essay.
Topic Sentences v. Thesis Statements
Many students struggle with the difference between topic sentences and thesis statements. One of the significant differences is the placement in your paper. Your topic sentence for the entire essay will be in your introductory paragraph’s first or second sentence. You will also have topic sentences for each section of the paper.
However, the difference is about more than placement. Your thesis statement should be more focused and nuanced than your topic sentence. Furthermore, the topic sentences of each supporting paragraph will support your thesis.
To understand the difference, you need to understand the difference between your essay’s topic and your paper’s narrow focus. For example, if you write an example essay about how dogs help humans, dogs helping humans is your topic. If you provide a specific example of a friend’s service dog, the service dog would be in the thesis. Then, your supporting paragraphs would show a connection between your thesis and the overall topic.
How to Write a Topic Sentence
Before writing a topic sentence, you must decide on your topic. What is the main point of your essay? Let us return to our example essay about dogs helping humans. A bad example of a topic sentence would be:
Dogs are good.
While most people agree with that statement, it is too broad to make a good topic sentence. Yes, it lets the readers know that you will be writing about dogs and that it will be positive, but they have no idea where that topic will go. Your topic sentence needs to do more than tell the reader what your essay is about; it also needs to tell them why you are writing it.
A better topic sentence would be:
Since their relationship with man began, dogs have been helping humans.
That sentence lets the reader know that you will discuss not just dogs but the helpful relationship between dogs and humans. It enables you to introduce the idea of service dogs so that you can narrow the focus to create your thesis statement. If you wanted to narrow your topic even more, you could hone your topic sentence further and make it something like:
For some people, dogs are more than man’s best friend; they are essential companions that help them live an everyday life.
Where to Place Your Topic Sentence
Generally, you want your topic sentence for the essay to be the essay’s opening sentence. There are exceptions, where you might choose to open with a hook statement instead. In those instances, your topic sentence should immediately follow your hook. That way, it serves as a bridge between your hook and the rest of the essay.
For complex writing, you could also begin each supporting paragraph with a hook. However, that approach will be overly complicated and seem disorganized for most academic writing. Instead, for most people, we suggest using the topic sentence as the first sentence for each of your introductory paragraphs. It will help provide structure for the readers. It can also help you identify and stick to a form as a writer.
What is an Effective Topic Sentence for an Essay?
You already know that good writing should feature many sentence types and structures. However, do you know you should avoid simple sentence structures for your topic sentence? While it is not a hard-and-fast rule, the reality is that using compound or complex sentence structures elevates your writing.
View 120,000+ High Quality Essay Examples
Learn-by-example to improve your academic writing
Topic Sentence Examples
Remember, your goal in an argumentative essay is to support a particular viewpoint. So, your topic sentence needs to contain that viewpoint. It should not simply be a fact. The stronger your perspective, the more likely you can convince the reader to agree, as long as you support it with evidence in the essay.
Ten examples of good topic sentences for argumentative essays, some of which we included above, are:
#1. Although people may be worried about overt racism, most of the discrimination in the criminal justice system is the result of covert racism.
#2. Abstinence-only education is bad for children because it stigmatizes sexual behavior while doing nothing to reduce teen pregnancy rates.
#3. Abstinence-based education is suitable for children because it delays the onset of sexual activity by approximately a year.
#4. 1 in 4 men have experienced domestic violence from a partner, which means you know a man who has been victimized.
#5. While many people think of domestic violence as a woman’s issue, the reality is that you know a man who has been victimized since 1 in 4 men will be a victim of domestic violence.
#6. For some people, dogs are more than man’s best friend; they are essential companions that help them live an everyday life.
#7. While often used to insult women, single female cat owners’ self-reported happiness rates suggest that becoming a cat lady may be a goal, not a curse.
#8. While it is important to respect individual choice, the tradwife trend is a warning sign of a culture embracing misogynistic ideals about a woman’s role.
#9. While the pro-choice argument hinges on when life begins, that is irrelevant; the issue concerns bodily autonomy and the ethics of forcing one human to use their body to support another, not about when life begins.
#10. The combination of sweet and savory flavors is well-known in the culinary world, so it seems clear that pineapple belongs on pizza.
Effective Topic Sentences
Looking at topic sentence ideas is looking at essay ideas. Once you get an idea for your essay, you can choose a direction and structure your topic sentence around that idea. Look at these two examples of a topic sentence to see different approaches:
Most of the discrimination in the criminal justice system is due to covert racism, not overt racism.
Although people may be worried about overt racism, most of the discrimination in the criminal justice system is the result of covert racism.
When discussing topic sentences for supporting paragraphs, it is essential to think about the flow of your essay. You want the paragraphs to transition naturally into one another while their first sentences should still announce the paragraph’s topic. One way to do that is to include transition words in your topic sentence. Those transition words can link the paragraph to the one above it, providing a smooth, seamless, and logical transition between thoughts.
How do you write an engaging first sentence in an essay?
One of the biggest challenges for writers is making their topic sentences attractive. That is especially true if you are writing about a topic your audience knows reasonably well. So, avoid making apparent statements when writing your topic sentence when possible. If you can, use a fact or a perspective that might be new to your readers. If you cannot do that, try to give the audience something to consider. You want your topic sentence to tell the audience what you are writing about and why they should give a damn.
To do that, you may want to link a fact to something relevant to your reader. For example, if you are writing an essay about domestic violence, your topic sentence could be:
1 in 4 men have experienced domestic violence from a partner.
That is an interesting fact that most people do not know since most domestic violence information focuses on violence against women. However, it is just a fact. You could make it more personal to the reader by stating:
1 in 4 men have experienced domestic violence from a partner, which means you know a man who has been victimized.
Now, this example sentence could be problematic, depending on the formality of the essay, since we generally avoid the second person (you) in formal, academic writing. However, it does provide food for thought since most people can probably name a woman they know who has been victimized but not a man. So, link the fact to something personal and thought-provoking.
Four Characteristics of an Effective Topic Sentence
An effective topic sentence has four primary characteristics:
- It is straightforward to follow.
- It has a main idea and a central idea.
- It uses engaging vocabulary.
- It signals the reader about the content and tone of the essay or paragraph.
Understanding the difference between a main idea and a controlling idea can be confusing. Think of the main idea as your broader topic. Returning to our service dog essay example, the main idea could be something as comprehensive as dogs are good. The main idea would be that dogs are good because they help people. You would not state a sentence in such primary language, but you can base your sentence on those ideas.
Some topic sentence examples that contain these four characteristics include:
Abstinence-only education is bad for children because it stigmatizes sexual behavior while doing nothing to reduce teen pregnancy rates.
Abstinence-based education is suitable for children because it delays the onset of sexual activity by approximately a year.
Notice that both sentences above have the same topic or main idea, abstinence-based sex education, but their main ideas differ. One of them is the introduction to an essay against abstinence-only education. At the same time, the other is the introduction to an essay for abstinence-only education. Those two directions are why you want to do more than introduce your main idea or topic; you also want to include a controlling idea.
Vital Topic Sentence in an Argumentative Essay
Want more helpful tips about how to write the best essay? Check out our essay title generator today!
Take the first step to becoming a better academic writer.
Writing tools.
- How to write a research proposal 2021 guide
- Guide to citing in MLA
- Guide to citing in APA format
- Chicago style citation guide
- Harvard referencing and citing guide
- How to complete an informative essay outline
How to Choose the Best Essay Topics
AI Text Detection Services
Unlock Your Writing Potential with Our AI Essay Writing Assistant
The Negative Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on Tactile Learning
TOPIC SENTENCE/ In his numerous writings, Marx critiques capitalism by identifying its flaws. ANALYSIS OF EVIDENCE/ By critiquing the political economy and capitalism, Marx implores his reader to think critically about their position in society and restores awareness in the proletariat class. EVIDENCE/ To Marx, capitalism is a system characterized by the “exploitation of the many by the few,” in which workers accept the exploitation of their labor and receive only harm of “alienation,” rather than true benefits ( MER 487). He writes that “labour produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces—but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty—but for the worker, deformity” (MER 73). Marx argues capitalism is a system in which the laborer is repeatedly harmed and estranged from himself, his labor, and other people, while the owner of his labor – the capitalist – receives the benefits ( MER 74). And while industry progresses, the worker “sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class” ( MER 483). ANALYSIS OF EVIDENCE/ But while Marx critiques the political economy, he does not explicitly say “capitalism is wrong.” Rather, his close examination of the system makes its flaws obvious. Only once the working class realizes the flaws of the system, Marx believes, will they - must they - rise up against their bourgeois masters and achieve the necessary and inevitable communist revolution.
Not every paragraph will be structured exactly like this one, of course. But as you draft your own paragraphs, look for all three of these elements: topic sentence, evidence, and analysis.
- picture_as_pdf Anatomy Of a Body Paragraph
IMAGES