A topic sentence states the one claim its paragraph will prove. Get these right and the essay structures itself; get them wrong and no amount of editing inside the paragraphs will rescue it.
Enter your topic and this tool offers six patterns — claim, contrast, addition, cause, concession and evaluation — along with the reverse outline test for checking whether your structure actually holds.
A topic sentence with two claims produces a paragraph that proves neither, because the evidence splits between them. If your sentence contains "and" joining two distinct assertions, you almost certainly have two paragraphs.
It should also be arguable rather than factual. "Unemployment rose in 2023" is a fact and needs no paragraph. "The 2023 rise in unemployment owed more to structural change than to policy" 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 cause patterns create movement, signalling how each paragraph relates to the last rather than merely that it follows it.
Concession openers are particularly useful and underused. Naming the strongest objection and then answering it shows you have engaged with the other side, which is what distinguishes an argument from an assertion.
When you have a draft, copy the first sentence of every body paragraph into a list and read it. Those sentences alone should tell the whole argument in order.
If the list jumps, repeats, or contains sentences that state facts rather than claims, you have found a structural problem. This takes two minutes and catches issues that hours of line-editing will not, because the problem is the arrangement rather than the prose.
Not in the topic sentence. The claim comes first, then the evidence that supports it, then your analysis of why the evidence supports the claim, then a link onward. Front-loading a statistic buries the point the paragraph exists to make.
Every paragraph should also connect back to the thesis. If you cannot state which part of your central argument a paragraph advances, it probably belongs in a different essay, however interesting the material is.
The sentence — usually the first — that states the single claim its paragraph will prove.
Usually, and always in academic writing where clarity matters more than suspense. A transition may precede it, but the claim should arrive early.
Long enough to prove one claim — typically four to eight sentences. A one-sentence paragraph rarely proves anything; a page-long one usually contains two claims.
Copy every topic sentence into a list and read them in order. If they form a coherent argument, your structure works.
Occasionally, for effect, but it weakens the paragraph — a question states no position, so the paragraph has nothing to prove.