Saturday, August 24, 2013

The Definition and Example of Topic Sentence, Supporting Sentence, Concluding Sentence, etc







a.     Topic Sentence
A topic sentence is the most important sentence in a paragraph. Sometimes referred to as a focus sentence, the topic sentence helps organize the paragraph by summarizing the information in the paragraph. In formal writing, the topic sentence is usually the first sentence in a paragraph (although it doesn't always have to be).

Example:
From: Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense by Lawrence Perrine
Fiction, like food, is of different nutritive values. Some is rich in protein and vitamins; it builds bone and sinew. Some is highly agreeable to the taste but not permanently sustaining. Some may be adulterated and actually harmful to our health. Escape fiction is of the latter two sorts. The harmless kind bears frankly on the face of it what it is. It pretends to be nothing else than pleasant diversion and never asks to be taken seriously. The second kind masquerades under the appearance of interpretation. It pretends to give a faithful treatment of life as it is, perhaps even thinks that it does so, but through its shallowness it subtly falsifies life in every line. Such fiction, taken seriously and without corrective, may give us false notions of reality and lead us to expect from experience what experience does not provide.

b.    Supporting Sentence:
The supporting sentence is the developing part which improves major ideas. While writing the supporting sentence, the controlling idea must be fully explained, discussed and exemplified. All the sentences should support the topic sentence.



Example:
It was a beautiful day. White clouds towered above the mountains, and the air was brisk and cold. The trees outside my office stirred in the wind, and a flock of crows rode the air currents up past my window, over the building and down past the windows on the other side.

c.      Concluding Sentence:
Generally, a concluding sentence is a restatement of the topic sentence, it gives the same information as the topic sentence, but it is expressed in a different way. Also, you can suggest, warn, give an opinion in the concluding sentence if you want to write an original one. While writing concluding sentence, we can use adverbs such as “all in all, consequently, in conclusion, in short, in summary, etc.”

Example:
My special treasure is a picture of my mother on her fifteenth birthday. This picture is always in my house when I was growing up. Years later when I got married and moved to Montreal, my mother gave it to me so that I would always remember her. Now, it sits on my table next to my bed. I look at it and imagine my mother’s life on that day. I think she was excited because her eyes are shining with happiness. Her smile is shy as if she were thinking about a secret. She is standing next to rose bush, and the roses are taller than she is. She is wearing a beautiful white lace dress and black shoes. Her hair is long and curly. She looks lovely in this peaceful place, and I feel calm when I gaze into her eyes at the end of my busy day. This picture of my mother is my most valuable possession.

d.    Sentence Beginning:
Sentences that repeatedly begin with similar elements, such as the subject or a construction like there is or there were, do not engage a reader. Consider the following variations for beginning sentences.

Example:
The population as a whole was unevenly distributed. The north was particularly thinly settled and the east densely populated, but even in counties like Warwickshire where there were substantial populations, some woodland areas were sparsely peopled. There was already relatively dense settlement in the prime arable areas of the country like Norfolk, Suffolk and Leicester shire. Modern estimates of England's total population, extrapolated from Domesday patterns, vary between 1 and 3 million.

e.      Simple sentence:
A simple sentence, also called an independent clause, contains a subject and a verb, and it expresses a complete thought. In the following simple sentences, subjects are in yellow, and verbs are in green.

Example:
From Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning's dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight'st houghts were as a dream. There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies, and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent.

f.      Compound Sentence:
A compound sentence contains two independent clauses joined by a coordinator. The coordinators are as follows: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. (Helpful hint: The first letter of each of the coordinators spells FANBOYS.) Except for very short sentences, coordinators are always preceded by a comma.

Example:
From "The White Seal," The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
The sea cows went on schlooping and grazing and chomping in the weed, and Kotick asked them questions in every language that he had picked up in his travels, and the Sea People talk nearly as many languages as human beings. But the Sea Cow did not answer, but Sea Cow cannot talk. He has only six bones in his neck where he ought to have seven, and they say under the sea that that prevents him from speaking even to his companions; but, as you know, he has an extra joint in his fore flipper, and by waving it up and down and about he makes a sort of clumsy telegraphic code.

g.     Complex sentence:
A complex sentence has an independent clause joined by one or more dependent clauses. A complex sentence always has a subordinator such as because, since, after, although, or when or a relative pronoun such as that, who, or which.

Example:
From Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
I accepted the offer, when Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into the post, and had paid me my money from a cashbox in a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back, and produced from his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went upstairs. The house was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr. Jaggers's room seemed to have been shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher--a large pale puffed swollen man--was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed to Mr. Jaggers's coffers.

h.    Compound-Complex Sentence:
The sentences containing adjective clauses (or dependent clauses) are also complex because they contain an independent clause and a dependent clause.

Example:
From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
On the following Monday, Mrs. Bennet had the pleasure of receiving her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend the Christmas at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, gentleman like man, greatly superior to his sister as well by nature as education. The Nether field ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so well bred and agreeable. Mrs. Gardiner, who was several years younger than Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Philips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant woman, and she was a great favourite with all her Longbourn nieces. Between the two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a very particular regard. They had frequently been staying with her in town.


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