The Three Es
Once you have written a good topic sentence that will help you stay on topic in your paragraph, it is time to start supporting the point made in that sentence. How you support your statements and ideas in writing is vital to its effectiveness. This support will make up the bulk of your writing. In this text, you will learn about different and complementary ways to support what you say.
No matter what type of writing we are talking about, probably the most important factor of good writing is that it accurately communicates what the author intended. If you are trying to get across information or explain an opinion, you want readers to finish reading and be informed or otherwise understand why you think the way that you do about a topic. If you are telling a story you want them to feel like they are right there. You want your readers to finish reading whatever you have written and be able to picture what you are saying. To do this, it is vital that you support your statements with evidence, elaboration, and explanation to demonstrate how they are true.
Evidence is going to include things like examples, case studies, and statistics which show how something is true.
Elaboration means adding details to what you are saying. Elaboration is generally going to be more specific, telling readers more about your evidence.
Explanation is similar to elaboration in that it will involve further clarifying your evidence. However, explanation either is going to go into further detail (answering any questions raised by your elaboration) or is going to show how different pieces of evidence relate to one another to support the topic sentence or thesis statement. (For right now think of a thesis statement as serving a similar purpose as a topic sentence only for a multi-paragraph essay – don't worry, we'll talk more about this term later). Explanation can involve defining terminology, explaining relationships between ideas, or explaining how evidence or elaboration show the topic sentence or thesis statement to be true.
What is most important to know here is that these three methods of support are going to work in tandem to show how what you are saying is true.
Source: Erin Severs
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