Back to: Writing Skills and Editing Principles
Explore how we can make our writing clear by using topic sentences in our paragraphs.
Paragraphs
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Writing Topic Sentences
Topic sentences summarise your entire paragraph within the first sentence of the paragraph itself. They are so powerful that your reader should be able to read just the topic sentence in order to understand the general point of the paragraph.
A topic sentence (also known as a focus sentence) encapsulates or organises an entire paragraph, and you should be careful to include one in most of your major paragraphs. Although topic sentences may appear anywhere in a paragraph, in academic essays they often appear at the beginning.
It might be helpful to think of a topic sentence as working in two directions simultaneously. It relates the paragraph to the essay’s thesis, and thereby acts as a signpost for the argument of the paper as a whole, but it also defines the scope of the paragraph itself. For example, consider the following topic sentence:
Read the article below – the topic sentences are in bold
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Article – How to Deliver Your Messages
Ask yourself a series of questions about your audiences so that you understand what triggers their interest.
Messages are the words that deliver your strategy. I spend a lot of time with organisations helping them to figure out what they want to say about their sector, policy or company. Sometimes it feels like an art but there is a system we can apply to structuring the messages that we want the outside world to read, hear and take notice of.
I bring thinking from my background in marketing communications. The practice of organising and refining our ideas is the same as used by corporate marketers who are trying to sell us lots of stuff. It’s a practice that works for the policy wonk world of Brussels and its institutions. Here are my reflections on a way forward to refining your messages. There are steps we can follow.
Before you start, be clear as to why you need messages and who you need to influence. The starting point of any message development is to think carefully about your target audiences. Take some time to ask yourself lots of questions about the people we wish to influence. Who are they? What do they care about? How do they think now and what you want them to know? What is close to them?
Identify the problem that your audience responds to. I keep seeing tweets and LinkedIn updates that shower me with “SMART cities”, “innovation”, “circular economy” and so on….Are these good things? I’m sure they are (and I’m only asking), but I am not sure what I am meant to feel about a “SMART city”. Unless you make the case to me in clear, simple terms with language that I can understand. I live in a city that isn’t particularly SMART, but I’m ok with it until you make me feel otherwise.
Make your audiences care and understand what bothers them most. What can you and your organisation, initiative, campaign do for them?
Get your audience to move because without movement communications are pointless. Effective messages move your audiences to think differently or do something. Awareness raising campaigns can only be the start of strategic communications. Be clear – what do you want your audiences to think? What do they need to do? What’s the call to action? Join the campaign, sign up, separate your rubbish into recycled, plastic and paper.
Reference: excerpt taken from www.communicatingeu.com