How to Write Better Topic Sentences
Master the art of writing effective topic sentences to improve content clarity, reader engagement, and SEO performance.
FILED UNDER · ACADEMIC WRITING
Considered Essays on Essay Writing, the Long Work of Revision, and the Quiet Discipline of Putting Words in Order
Each card opens to the full issue.
Master the art of writing effective topic sentences to improve content clarity, reader engagement, and SEO performance.
Craft a compelling discussion section by interpreting your findings, contextualizing them with existing knowledge, and outlining p…
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The strands the newsletter keeps returning to.
ESSAY CRAFT
“The essay form looks accessible because most readers can recognize a good essay and many readers can produce a competent one. The work of pr…”
Why I picked this: A clear statement of the question that animates the rest of the archive.
Read this issue →REVISION
“Many writers use the words revision and editing interchangeably. They describe different operations that serve different purposes. Treating …”
Why I picked this: The methodology piece that everything afterwards builds on.
Read this issue →ESSAY CRAFT
“The advice to "read like a writer" is widely repeated in writing instruction. The standard interpretation of the advice misses what actually…”
Why I picked this: The one I keep recommending when readers ask where to start.
Read this issue →
— Editor & writer —
Writes from Oxford, United Kingdom.
The Sisaac — *considered essays on essay writing, the slow craft of revision, and the difficult work of putting words in their proper order*.
Most current writing about writing falls into specific categories. There are productivity guides that promise systems for producing more words. There are technique manuals that catalog rhetorical devices. There are inspirational essays that celebrate the writing life without quite engaging with what writing actually is. None of these are precisely what I have wanted to read across a career spent thinking about the essay form and teaching others to write within it.
This site is what I have wanted to read. The essays here treat writing as a craft and a discipline. They engage with the work of revision more honestly than the productivity literature does. They treat academic writing as a legitimate form rather than as a defective version of trade writing. They draw on a specific tradition — the essay from Montaigne forward — and on twenty-two years of teaching others to write within it. The register is literary because the subject deserves it. The intent is the kind of careful attention the essay form has always rewarded.
Recurring concerns
— — Margaret
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