WRITING YOUR DOCUMENT
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If you look back to the second paragraph of the previous subsection, you will see that the topic sentence is, in fact, the second sentence: “Its [the paragraph’s] main function is to present information to the reader in a chunk of manageable size.” It contains the basic idea that the paragraph is intended to convey. The first sentence serves as an introduction to it. The subsequent sentences discuss the concept of manageability and the disadvantages of presenting the reader with an unbroken run of text. The topic sentence is the core of most paragraphs. For the writer, it is a guide to what belongs in a particular paragraph: Anything that falls within the paragraph should be related to the topic sentence. It has a similar function for the reader: It indicates to him or her what the paragraph is essentially about. Consequently, it is the sentence that it is most important to get right, that is, to make clear and, if possible, succinct. A topic sentence ought, as a rule, to be fairly specific. If you choose to center your paragraph on a very general statement, you may saddle yourself with a task that you cannot accomplish within a paragraph of reasonable size. If, for example, your wrote as your topic sentence “Hamlet’s encounter with his father ghost changes his whole worldview,” you would be committing yourself to a discussion of virtually the entire play. This is an essay title rather than a topic sentence. If, instead, you wrote, “Hamlet’s encounter brings about an immediate change in his behavior,” then you would be limiting yourself to a discussion of the action following Hamlet’s exchanges with the ghost in act I scene 5—a subject that can reasonably be dealt with in the space of a paragraph. Similarly, “Oil and gas supplies from the former Soviet Union are under threat” is less useful as a topic sentence than, for example, “Oil and gas supplies from southern areas of the former Soviet Union are particularly vulnerable to terrorist attack.” By restricting the discussion to a particular geographical area and a specific kind of threat, the second example promises to handle a more manageable amount of information. In order to help bind the paragraph together, it is sometimes useful to structure the topic sentence in such a way that it contains key words that recur within the remainder of the paragraph. Consider this example: Almost every American family possesses a useful and much neglected educational tool hidden away in drawer or cupboard and fished out maybe once or twice a year: a deck of cards. Card games aren’t just fun; they’re a great way of training children’s memories, making them concentrate, and teaching them basic social skills. They also bring the whole family together for some quality time. Natural competitiveness quickly shows; it’s that much more fun for the kids if they can beat Mommy or Daddy or Brother or Sister. But it won’t be quality time if they can’t get some fun out of just playing and maybe losing once in a while. Learning not to be a sore loser, that’s a basic social skill; so is joining in wholeheartedly, and letting everyone have a turn. But they can’t win if they don’t concentrate. They have to watch those cards or they’ll lose their chance. And if they can’t remember what’s on the table and what’s still in the deck, they’ll soon learn what it means to go bust!
This paragraph is written in an informal style, but the informality of its tone conceals a fairly formal structure. It has a topic sentence—the second