For clarity's sake: Topic Sentences

Imagine going to a different city for the first time. You could be moving, meeting friends, starting a new job, whatever. You have a goal in mind, but when you get to the city, you're confronted by a lack of street signs. No matter how neat and orderly the streets are, there's little more than the unique features along the streets to help you find your way. Stuff like, brick houses with blue roofs, or black wrought iron fences, or the house with a stone lion occupying the porch. You have a vague idea where you want to go, but even if you stop and ask directions, they're vague and indirect, relying on specific landmarks you've seen a dozen times.

The thesis is the destination. It gives you an idea of where you're going and how to get there when reading or writing an essay. But topic sentences are the distinct, more specific directions letting you know the precise path to take. The thesis may be the address, but the topic sentences are the finer indicators of when to turn and which way to go. Just as the thesis tells you what the essay is about, topic sentences tell you what the paragraph is about.

This means an essay can be subdivided from the thesis into more specific subtopics, each one explained in its own paragraph. The same principle even applies to sentence structures: a sentence has a single, specific idea it’s trying to convey. Any less and it’s an incomplete sentence; more than one and it’s a run on sentence. The same applies to paragraphs and essays; an essay with a split thesis is basically a run on sentence.

Topic sentences generally appear at the beginning of a paragraph. Not necessarily the first sentence, but odds are it will be close. By placing a distinct topic sentence at the start of a paragraph, it gives readers a lens through which to interpret the paragraph. Like I said above: it gives direction and creates expectations. When those expectations aren’t met, we run into breakdowns in organization, essays and paragraphs that say more than they should, and that means tangents. Topic sentences that do not directly support the thesis are defined as tangents. Keeping track of one's thesis and topic sentences is a good way to make sure an essay is not diverting and the sentences stay on topic.

Lining up theses, topic sentences, and paragraphs makes composing an essay manageable because, with them, you can worry about an essay in sections and paragraphs rather than as a whole. Once you can identify the purpose of a paragraph in the bigger scheme of the essay (with, of course, a topic sentence), it makes it easier to focus on the individual sentences. Each sentence plays an integral role in developing the thesis of the essay, but tying one sentence to dozens or hundreds to the thesis is intimidating, especially when they need to fit in the flow of the rest of the essay. Instead, line up the topic sentences with the thesis, and the individual sentences with the topic sentences of their respective paragraphs.

Clear topic sentences are an important way to make the otherwise daunting task of writing an essay manageable: it makes it easier to keep track of what goes where, which helps with organization and revision. With topic sentences, you can create better outlines, manage organization, and eliminate tangents. Most of all, though, it helps you go from writing long essays to writing manageable paragraphs, each with a distinct topic.

Show that you Know: Source Integration Overview

Source integration is a matter of properly introducing, referencing, citing, and explaining research sources. On the one hand this is important for coherent writing. On the other, it's an important way to demonstrate familiarity with the research itself. If a source is poorly integrated, it suggests the writer didn't understand the information.

So, when you embark on a research project and are faced with referencing your research in your essay, take the following into consideration.

• Research First: When starting a research project, you shouldn't start with drafting the actual essay. Instead, invest in research and learn more about your topic.
• Active Research: Good source integration means good research, and good research means taking the time to read closely, take notes, and evaluate your sources.
• Take Notes: Jotting down interesting information, highlighting or bookmarking intriguing passages, and otherwise making personal records of what you learn from your research.
• Introduce & Explain sources: Any time you put research into your own writing you are repurposing and recontextualizing it. Therefore, it is essential to take the time to explain your research before summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting it (also, see Hit & Run Quotes below).
• Summarize: Explaining the main points, thesis, and arguments of a source.
• Paraphrase: Taking a selection of a larger piece and reiterating the main points in your own words.
• Quote: Using the exact words of a source in your own piece.
• Blended Words: Carefully integrating a quote with your own words.
• In-Text Citations: Knowing where to place in-text citations, and why they go there.
• Synthesis: Finding and recognizing where your sources have related points so you can reference them together.

Knowing how to integrate sources is important, but sometimes a good way to figure out why we do something is to understand how not to do it.

• Hit & Run Quotes: This term comes from a book entitled They Say/I Say, and it refers to improperly introduced and explained quotes.
• Patchwriting: Paraphrasing and quoting at the same time and without quotation marks. This involves taking a selection from a source, changing a few words here and there, and not treating it as a quote. This can be borderline plagiarism. Instead, quote or use more of your own words.
• Just the first few pages: Don't just rely on a few pithy statements from the opening pages of a book or article; take the time to go through the entire piece and you'll find more useful information.
• Excessive Integration: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Sometimes, it's easier to just quote ad nauseum or even give too much supplementary information.
• Plagiarism: The failure to properly acknowledge research, or, taking the work of another passing it off as your own. This is one of the worst things you can ever do.

Improper source integration can harm an essay. Sometimes it’s easy to just drop in quotes or citations and call it good. However, good source integration is more than just a stylistic issue. Coherent writing means a coherent thought process, so coherently integrating sources suggests a better understanding of the material. An author who drops in quotes willy-nilly probably just found and crammed them in there and doesn’t understand what they are saying. Taking the time to introduce, explain, synthesize, and blend shows you know the information well enough it is part of your own thought process and knowledge: it shows you are confident in your knowledge and you can control the information.

Disrespect, lies, deceit and...typeface

I normally strive for a pleasant, jovial but serious tone in my posts. If I can develop a joke or appropriate analogy, I’ll use it to lighten the mood and as a teaching moment.

This is not one of those posts.

Sooner or later, every year, I hear someone say something about making slight, seemingly imperceptible changes to the typeface to make an essay seem just long enough. Why use font size 12 when 13 will remove a line or two on every page? Why have inch margins when a tenth and an inch will shorten those lines?

Well, there's a lot of reasons why not.

For starters, there's the issues addressed in the post “Why The Page Count?” to explain the logic behind a page requirement. I'm not going to rehash those here. Ultimately, maintaining the typeface isn't a matter of assignment requirements: it's a matter of trust and respect.

In my own experience, my first year teaching consisted of 4 courses of about 20 students writing 15 typed pages each: 1200 total typed pages. The next year, 5 courses of 20 students writing 20 typed pages: 2000 total. Now I was just a graduate student, I wouldn’t be surprised if full-time professors, after a decade of teaching, have graded as many as 30,000 typed pages.

So I wonder what goes through student's heads when they triple space an essay, or set the margins on the left and right to be an inch and a quarter rather than just an inch. Thinking an instructor won't pick up on alterations to the typeface is like expecting a golfer to not know the difference between woods and irons.

When a student does this it shatters, literally breaks, whatever trust and confidence the instructor had in them. It is cheating. It is a student assuming the rules and expectations instructors establish don’t apply to them. I stress to my students that this is important not just because it’s an arbitrary standard, but because it keeps grading fair. Having a page formatted with 1.25 inch margins instead of 1 inch can increase the length of an essay by about 1/7th. Almost 15%. That is, in terms of grading, the difference between an A- and a C+. Should a project be accepted when it openly skirts around 15% of the work?

So what if someone forgets? I’m open to this possibility and I’ve seen it happen, but it usually depends on the circumstances of the situation. I had a student once who, after a great track record made one significant formatting mistake late in the semester after having done theretofore pristine work. We discussed the issue, the student revised, resubmitted, and all was well. Lesson learned.

Sometimes, though, even drumming and hammering the lesson won’t do. I’ve had students submit every essay incorrectly formatted. I reminded them in the feedback. I plead with them indirectly when addressing the class, and some still didn’t fix it. My approach in these situations was simple: if after weeks and months of my instruction and feedback, a student still has not figured out the need to change the typeface it really makes me wonder what they learned. Forgetfulness is one thing, but at this point, it’s negligence.

It upsets me when people suggest doing this so flippantly, but more so when people actually do it. Take the length specifications seriously. Skimming on the length of an essay is not too different from, say, ignoring test questions and expecting the instructor just to ignore them when grading. Most of all, though, this is disrespectful to peers: those who did the work, who filled their pages and followed directions. I rigidly teach formatting not because I’m obsessed with it, nor because students need to know MLA or APA or Chicago, but because it keeps grading fair. It keeps everyone’s three, five, or ten pages the same three, five, or ten pages. But insisting four pages is indeed five, is a deception, a lie, and a blatant act of disrespect to instructors and peers.