A topic sentence states the single claim its paragraph will prove. Get these right and the essay holds together; get them wrong and no amount of polishing inside the paragraphs will rescue the structure.
Enter your topic and this tool offers six patterns — claim, contrast, addition, cause, concession and evaluation — with the reverse outline test for checking whether your argument actually progresses.
A topic sentence carrying two claims produces a paragraph that proves neither, because the evidence splits. If yours contains an "and" joining two distinct assertions, you almost certainly have two paragraphs.
It should be arguable rather than factual. "Enrolment rose in 2023" is a fact needing no paragraph. "The 2023 enrolment rise owed more to the scholarship scheme than to demographic change" is a claim, and a paragraph can be built to support it.
An essay where every paragraph opens "Another factor is…" reads as a list rather than an argument. Contrast, concession and causal openers create movement, signalling how each paragraph relates to the last rather than merely that it comes after it.
Concession openers are the most underused. Naming the strongest objection and then answering it demonstrates engagement with the other side, which is what separates an argument from an assertion — and is explicitly rewarded in most marking rubrics.
Once drafted, copy the first sentence of every body paragraph into a list and read it through. Those sentences alone should convey your whole argument in order.
If the list jumps, repeats itself, or contains statements of fact rather than claims, the problem is structural. This takes two minutes and finds issues that hours of sentence-level editing will not, because the fault is the arrangement rather than the prose.
Not in the topic sentence. Claim first, then evidence, then your analysis of why the evidence supports the claim, then a link onward. Opening with a statistic buries the point the paragraph exists to make.
Every paragraph should also tie back to the thesis. If you cannot say which part of your central argument a paragraph advances, it likely belongs in a different essay — however interesting the material.
The sentence — usually the first — stating the single claim that its paragraph will prove.
Usually, and in academic writing almost always. A transition may precede it, but the claim should arrive early.
Long enough to prove one claim, typically four to eight sentences. A page-long paragraph usually contains two claims.
Copy every topic sentence into a list and read them in order. If they form a coherent argument, the structure works.
Occasionally for effect, but it weakens the paragraph — a question states no position, so there is nothing to prove.