PRDV008: Preparing and Delivering Presentations

Topic Sentence Workshop

Summary: Professional writers don't follow the topic sentence rules from school. Their topics are often implied, and rarely found at the beginning of a paragraph. It's therefore important to understand the difference between a topic sentence and a first sentence.

If you attended high school in the U.S., you probably were taught that every paragraph, without fail, should have a topic sentence that obeys the following rules:

• Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence (from Strunk & White's respected "Elements of Style").
• Topic sentences are never just a fact.
• Topic sentences must contain a provable ('arguable') opinion.
• Topic sentences should be more general than the other sentences. Plurals and the words "many", "numerous", or "several" often signal a topic sentence.
• Topic sentences should sum up the point of the paragraph.

In addition to this, there is a rise in teaching paragraphs based on a formula, such as the Jane Schaeffer method, which spells out even more rigidly what each sentence should do. These are easy to write, ensure that things a teacher expects in a paragraph are there, and--for the teacher--are a snap to grade.

But no writing in the real world sounds like this. Does this teach students how to write realistically?

In 1974, Richard Braddock of the University of Iowa studied topic paragraphs in contemporary professional writing (i.e. the real world--The Atlantic, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Reporter, The Saturday Review), and found the following:

• Only 45% of topic sentences were traditional, simple topic sentences (others were assembled in multiple sentences).
• Only 55% explicitly stated topic of the paragraph (others did so implicitly).
• Only 13% of paragraphs of contemporary writers begin with a topic sentence, and 3% end with a topic sentence.

Because of this, Braddock suggests that even if teachers encourage students to use clear topic sentences in their writing, they shouldn't tell students that professional writers use simple, explicit topic sentences that always begin paragraphs. (Braddock importantly acknowledges that this is not the case for scientific and technical writing).

When I was in grad school, a professor of mine described the structure first sentences of paragraphs in a different way than the 'topic sentence' model. He said that if a reader reads the first sentence of each paragraph, s/he should basically be able to follow the essay's train of thought. That's significantly different than giving a 'greatest hits' list of your main points. It also encourages using plenty of transition and connective techniques in first sentences, moving out of previous paragraphs and into the subsequent ones.

What do I do when I write?

I've excerpted just the first sentences (not necessarily topic sentences) of each paragraph from a paper I wrote which explored Orange County as it is represented in popular media (these excerpts make up the introductory section of the paper; read the whole introduction here). Afterward, I'll make some conclusions about first sentences.

[Paragraph 1]

"This is a story about love and death in the golden land," begins Joan Didion's 1966 essay, "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream," composed in the writer's falling apart years, when she felt her own psyche to perfectly mirror the 1960s era.

The typical 'start with a quote technique'? Not exactly. This is not a general quote (like "Throughout American history, California has been known as the Golden Land"). This starts with a detail, a soupçon of one text describing California, a text that is not the focus of my essay but provides a starting point in time (1966) for an essay dealing with representations after 1970. I want to stick to the details - relevant and formative details--before extrapolating any universal statements.

[Paragraph 2] Didion's essay tells the story of murder-convict Lucille Miller, a housewife living in a San Bernardino subdivision who, according to Didion's interpretation, came to California with that apparently ubiquitous dream of prosperity, a dream that would, inevitably, go unfulfilled.

This summarizes Didion's essay. It's not an 'arguable' statement, like many topic sentence guides encourage. It implicitly sets up a main concern/theme about how dreams in California go awry. Maybe I feel justified not to be arguing here because early on I'm building my case, telling a story, gathering evidence, before arriving at the verdict.

[Paragraph 3] Southern California. Land of palm trees, healthy climates, real estate fortunes, political conservatism, panoramic ocean vistas, and peaceful Spanish mission history.

This one isn't even a statement. It's a list of stereotypes and images that suffuse California. In this paragraph, the "topic sentence" is perhaps the one that follows: "This idealized image was promoted by writers, publicists, and city boosters at the turn of the twentieth century," because it takes those stereotypes and images and asserts that people used them to create a utopian image of California. But this sentence doesn't start the paragraph because I want to recreate those images in the reader's mind first.

[Paragraph 4] It's unsurprising, then, that stories set in suburbia--even when they're outside California--share many of these same idealized tropes.

The word "then" signals a key change - I'm taking a step back, making an observation. The phrase "idealized tropes" refers back to the main idea introduced in the previous paragraph. As it happens, in this paragraph, my topic sentence is divided between this sentence and the following, which adds another level of complexity to the issue of California's idealized image: "But as Didion's essay demonstrates, literary suburbia also makes the ideal setting to playing with contradictions between appearance and reality".

[Paragraph 5] Interestingly, suburban literature and California texts share a similarity: literature written after the boosters' myths similarly "debunked" the purported Southern California utopia, usually through storylines about class violence, oppressive labor conditions, rampant crime, and through settings that portrayed an inhospitable desert climate.

By starting with the word "interestingly," I indicate that the observation I'm making about a similarity between suburban literature and California texts is not obvious or expected.

[Paragraph 6] Simply put, previous scholarship argues that fiction set in suburban Southern California consistently exploits the contrast between myth and reality.

The words "Simply put" indicate that I'm summing up the point I've made so far (not the point of the paragraph, as many guides encourage), and am ready to give a soundbyte to encapsulate the previous information. By doing so, I'm preparing to move the essay in a new direction…

[Paragraph 7] But now, Southern California's landscape is no longer suburban in the traditional sense.

There is a triple shift going on here: instead of talking about the past, I'm talking about "now;" instead of talking about texts, I'm talking about California "landscape;" instead of talking about "traditional suburbia," I'm talking about whatever comes after that (postsuburbia). The "But" at the beginning of the paragraph helps to emphasize this shift.

[Paragraph 8] Unlike the predominantly residential suburb, these cities feature commercial and cultural centers which make the region economically and culturally self-sufficient in ways that the traditional suburb isn't (8).

This explains the details of what has changed. Not an 'arguable' sentence, nor is it my own idea: I'm paraphrasing a writer I introduced in the previous paragraph.

[Paragraph 9] For these reasons, Orange County represents what is now described as "postsuburban," a formation that according to sociologist Rob Kling centers around production and consumption, which he says has far-reaching influence on everything from a consumer-oriented lifestyle to housing prices, politics, cosmopolitanism (ethnic culture gives a flavor of internationalism), and recreation (built around "mass leisure").

"For these reasons" links the details from the previous paragraph to the label put to them, "postsuburban". This sentence has more information in it than a simple topic sentence – it adds what one scholar thinks the significance of the change is - but I want to put that all into one sentence because the ideas are so closely related that I want them to be one 'package' of information.

[Paragraph 10] This change means that fictions set in an Orange County since the 1970s must perform a more complicated relationship between their postsuburban reality and the "Southern California story" genre tropes I detailed above.

This is not a thesis statement, even though it ends the introductory portion of my paper, and sort of sounds like it with the phrase 'this change means.' But all I say here that there is a complicated relationship going on now. I don't spell out how that relationship works. So instead of being a thesis statement, this could be called a 'scope statement,' where I outline what I'll be analyzing, not (yet) the point of that analysis.

What to notice about my style in these paragraphs' first sentences?

Many sentences include an introductory clause ("It's unsurprising, then, that…" "For these reasons…" "This change means that…" that actually delays the information. This surprises me. Normally I would want to get to the point as quickly as possible, for readability's sake. So why do I do this?

I read the sentences without the beginning clauses, one after another. They make sense, but the connections between my ideas are only implied:

Without connectives:

Suburban literature and California texts share a similarity: literature written after the boosters' myths similarly "debunked" the purported Southern California utopia, usually through storylines about class violence, oppressive labor conditions, rampant crime, and through settings that portrayed an inhospitable desert climate. Previous scholarship argues that fiction set in suburban Southern California consistently exploits the contrast between myth and reality. Southern California's landscape is no longer suburban in the traditional sense.

With connectives:

Interestingly, suburban literature and California texts share a similarity: literature written after the boosters' myths similarly "debunked" the purported Southern California utopia, usually through storylines about class violence, oppressive labor conditions, rampant crime, and through settings that portrayed an inhospitable desert climate. Simply put, previous scholarship argues that fiction set in suburban Southern California consistently exploits the contrast between myth and reality. But now, Southern California's landscape is no longer suburban in the traditional sense.

Second, it seems like first sentences can be statements of detail or paraphrases/quotes from others or connections/analyses/points of my own (the last of which being what is typically called a topic sentence).

Topic Sentences versus First Sentences

Based on this short excerpt, it seems that first sentences have an important role to connect ideas. Topic sentences they may or may not be, but I notice that I use both simple transition words (but, simply, interestingly, unlike, then) and more complex ones, sometimes in the same introductory clause, and sometimes I use referential pronouns (these, this, they).

Like Robert Braddock's research suggests, it's hard to make rules for what a topic sentence should do or where it should be. I suppose it goes back to the old idea of not putting the cart (in this case, the structure) before the horse (the ideas). What you want to say in a paragraph should determine what order and how it's said, not the other way around.

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Source: Mark Fullmer, https://web.archive.org/web/20150905214450/https://writing.markfullmer.com/topic-sentence-linking-what-introductory-sentences-really-do/
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