Body paragraphs
Once you have engaged your readers and presented your thesis in
your introduction, use your body paragraphs to fully develop your ideas. You
can do this by first introducing a sub-topic of the thesis in a topic sentence.
For example, if you were expanding a theme about Napoleon’s loss at Waterloo,
you might have a topic sentence that reads like this: “Napoleon brought on one
of the first financial crises of the French government by emptying government
coffers for his war with Britain.” Notice that the topic sentence doesn’t
provide details, just the general topic of the paragraph. Notice also that the
topic sentence tells readers how the paragraph’s topic/main idea relates to the
essay’s core thesis. In other words, a topic sentence not only gives a fact but
makes a point or gives an interpretation about that fact, showing how it is
relevant or significant to the essay’s core purpose. It is important to
remember, too, that the topic sentence is your idea, based on the
interpretation of your sources.
With your topic sentence in place, you can now develop your idea
with sentences that provide supporting details. In the above example,
these details might be facts about the repercussions of Napoleon’s financial
crisis or about opposition that he faced as a result. In a history paper, these
details would most likely take the form of quotations or paraphrases from
sources, but depending on your writing purpose, audience, and
discipline, supporting details might also be facts, personal anecdotes, or
logical reasoning. Whatever form of evidence you use, make sure it is
convincing to your audience within the context of your writing purpose and that
it supports the statement you make in your topic sentence.
In well-developed body paragraphs, you
not only have to provide evidence to support the topic sentence, you also have
to interpret it for your readers. (Remember, you are providing signposts
for them.) For example, if you were developing the paragraph about Napoleon’s
financial mismanagement, it would not be enough to provide quotes or
paraphrases with the facts. You would have to show readers how those
details supported the idea that Napoleon’s financial mismanagement was
connected to his final defeat at Waterloo. In other words, as a writer, you are
obliged to interpret sources, facts or reasoning and connect the
interpretation to the thesis statement with transition signals.
Remember the idea of a paragraph as a mini-essay? Just as all
essays have conclusions that review and sum up the ideas in a paper, a
paragraph has a concluding sentence that sums up the point of the
paragraph and ties it clearly to the thesis. Thus, a concluding sentence for
our hypothetical paragraph about Napoleon’s financial woes might read: “In this
way, the hostility that Napoleon engendered in the French banking community
began a series of events that would end in his defeat at Waterloo.” A good
concluding sentence sums up the main point of the paragraph and provides
readers with the “so what?”— the reason that the point is important to the
conclusion of the paper.