Supporting sentences describe, explain, clarify, or give examples of the main idea in the topic sentence. They answer questions such as Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? They explain the topic sentence in greater detail and give the reader more information. Continue reading →

A topic sentence must have a topic + a claim about the topic. This almost always means a SUBJECT (noun or noun phrase) plus a VERB (or verb phrase). If it lacks a verb or verb phrase, it might be a good title, but certainly will not be a good topic sentence, or even a full sentence! (Remember S + V?) Continue reading →