Topic Sentences For Quotes

Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world? Have you ever noticed that?" Nicole asked. "You go on websites and some girl leaves a post and if it's longer than three sentences or she's expressing her thoughts about some topic, she usually ends with, 'Sorry for the rant' or 'That may be dumb, but that's what I think.

She didn't even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies.

How I'm rushing through this! How much each sentence in this brief story contains. "The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more ? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagina-tion—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern—of which I am a part—perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why ? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it ? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

There was something so unutterably ridiculous about the sight of a US company deleting posts accusing it of censorship that many other people began to protest.

2. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning.

because the cigarette or spliff was an indispensable technology, a substitute for speech in social situations, a way to occupy the mouth and hands when alone, a deep breathing technique that rendered exhalation material, a way to measure and/or pass the time. More important than the easily satisfiable addiction, what the little cylinders provided me was a prefabricated motivation and transition, a way to approach or depart from a group of people or a topic, enter or exit a room, conjoin or punctuate a sentence. The hardest part of quitting would be the loss of narrative function; it would be like removing telephones or newspapers from the movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age; there would be no possible link between scenes, no way to circulate information or close distance, and when I imagined quitting smoking, I imagined “settling down,” not because I associated quitting with a more mature self-care, but because I couldn’t imagine moving through an array of social spaces without the cigarette as bridge or exit strategy.

In your head, you’ll probably find two models for writing. One is the familiar model taught in high school and college—a matter of outlines and drafts and transitions and topic sentences and argument. The other model is its antithesis—the way poets and novelists are often thought to write. Words used to describe this second model include “genius,” “inspiration,” “flow,” and “natural,” sometimes even “organic.” Both models are useless. I should qualify that sentence. Both models are completely useless.

people learn by integrating new information into their existing web of knowledge. They don’t like it when a fact is hurled at them from out of the blue and they have to keep it levitating in short-term memory until they find a relevant background to embed it in a few moments later. Topic-then-comment and given-then-new orderings are major contributors to coherence, the feeling that one sentence flows into the next rather than jerking the reader around.

I'd like to make a minor adjustment to Leo Tolstoy's oft-quoted first sentence: "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, and when it comes to the Holiday Season, happy families can abruptly become unhappy and happy families can, to their great alarm, be happy.

Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world? Have you ever noticed that?” Nicole asked. “You go on websites and some girl leaves a post and if it’s longer than three sentences or she’s expressing her thoughts about some topic, she usually ends with, ‘Sorry for the rant’ or ‘That may be dumb, but that’s what I think.

All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us.

Topic and page number, you capture your thoughts as short, objective sentences known as Bullets. Each Bullet is paired with a specific symbol to categorize your entry. We use Bullets not only because it takes less time,

She bops around really energetically but she’s also still. Like she’s moving her torso but her feet don’t move, and then sometimes she’ll take one step, and it feels like a thesis statement. Like it is a topic sentence about her butt.

In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the ‘imaginary’ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being — a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say ‘Tomorrow I will mow the lawn,’ the ‘I’ which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the ‘I’ which does the pronouncing. The former ‘I’ is known to linguistic theory as the ‘subject of the enunciation’, the topic designated by my sentence; the latter ‘I’, the one who speaks the sentence, is the ‘subject of the enunciating’, the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two ‘I’s’ seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The ‘subject of the enunciating’, the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun ‘I’ stands in for the ever-elusive subject, which will always slip through the nets of any particular piece of language; and this is equivalent to saying that I cannot ‘mean’ and ‘be’ simultaneously. To make this point, Lacan boldly rewrites Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ as: ‘I am not where I think, and I think where I am not.

I composed balanced sentences and periodic sentences and practiced, till I was blue in the face, the English department adage, Vary your sentence structure. Amazingly enough, having a mix of long and short sentences, along with topic-body-conclusion paragraph structure, did not automatically make my prose interesting.

While I was contemplating what to do, Storm’s voice came from behind me. “Sun, could you come and chat with me for a while ?” “Brother Storm, would you like to talk about the God of Light’s benevolence or the God of Light’s devotion ?” Of course I would ! I was actually trying to find someone, anyone, to talk to so that I could pass some time not waving, so that my subsequent waving speed could be increased slightly. However, I never thought that Storm would actually initiate a conversation with me. But Storm initiating a conversation with me is a strange thing ; he always says that talking to me for one minute is about as exhausting as winking one hundred times. We only need to talk for ten minutes for him to have an especially good night’s sleep that night, because he would be way too tired. “We don’t need to look for a topic, its fine to just talk about anything ; I just want to pretend to be talking.” After Storm’s hurried explanation, he saw my doubtful expression and added, “You know, there are hundreds of women on this street right now, and this march will pass by more than ten streets. If I have to wink at every single woman, then at the end of this march, even if I don’t go blind, I will still suffer a horrible fate. So, my teacher taught me the technique of handling this march with only one thousand winks !” “...” Why does this sentence sound so familiar ?

Not only does he choose his own words with great care, but he insists that you do too, so, for example, when I carelessly deployed the term “recreational use,” he stopped me in mid-sentence. “Maybe we need to reexamine that term. Typically, it is used to trivialize an experience. But why? In its literal meaning, the word ‘recreation’ implies something decidedly nontrivial. There is much more to be said, but let’s bookmark this topic for another time. Please go on.

of activity in different sorts of substrate – organic, electronic, or otherwise? Could a machine communicate with humans on an unlimited set of topics through fluent use of a human language? Could a language-using machine give the appearance of understanding sentences and coming up with ideas while in truth being as devoid of thought and as empty inside as a nineteenth-century adding machine or a twentieth-century word processor? How might we distinguish between a genuinely conscious and intelligent mind and a cleverly constructed but hollow language-using facade? Are understanding and reasoning incompatible with a materialistic, mechanistic view of living beings? Could a machine ever be said to have made its own decisions? Could a machine have beliefs? Could a machine make mistakes? Could a machine believe it made its own decisions? Could a machine erroneously attribute free will to itself? Could a machine come up with ideas that had not been programmed into it in advance? Could creativity emerge from a set of fixed rules? Are we – even the

But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive. There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon’s History, Evelyn’s Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell’s own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics.

First Nations and science fiction don't usually go together. In fact, they could be considered rather unusual topics to mention in the same sentence, much like fish and bicycles.... To me, sci-fi was a world of possibilities. As a fan of writing, why shouldn't my fascination extend to such unconventional works? It was still writing, still literature in all its glory, but here they used different tools to explore the human condition, be they aliens, advanced technology, or other such novel approaches.... I wanted to take traditional (a buzzword in the Native community) science-fiction characteristics and filter them through an Aboriginal consciousness.

Every artist complains, so it’s a dead and boring topic. (From the volume of complaints that emerges from the professional creative class, you would think these people had been sentenced to their vocations by an evil dictator, rather than having chosen their work with a free will and an open heart.) Second, of course it’s difficult to create things; if it wasn’t difficult, everyone would be doing it, and it wouldn’t be special or interesting. Third, nobody ever really listens to anybody else’s complaints, anyhow, because we’re all too focused on our own holy struggle, so basically you’re just talking to a brick wall. Fourth, and most important, you’re scaring away inspiration. here’s a trick: Stop complaining.

Writers do not always deliberately choose to write about a particular subject or develop select themes; rather the topic and the resultant work product frequently effuse from their pores. I work in an aimless fashion, similar to how a rudderless vessel steers no deliberate course. When the muse grabs us by the throat and makes us speak for it, we cannot question the wisdom behind the message generated by isolated sentences and paragraphs, elect to decipher sequestered ideas, or equivocate with the emotive utterings made while standing alone in the coldness of the night. All we can do is hold a lantern up to the self and take dictation. Later when our muse slumbers, we can evaluate the written scribbling for the resultant collective punch.

How did you find me?" "I've followed you for a long time." He must have mistaken the look on my face for alarm or fear, and said, "Not literally. I just mean I never lost track." But it wasn't fear, or anything like that. It was an instant of realization I'd have a lot in the coming days: I'd been thinking of him as coming back from the dead, but the fact was he'd been there all along. He'd been alive when I cried in my room over him being gone. He'd been alive when I started a new school without him, the day I made my first friend a Jones Hall, the time I ran into Ethan at the library. Cameron Quick and I had existed simultaneously on the planet during all of those moments. It didn't seem possible that we could have been leading separate lives, not after everything we'd been through together. "...then I looked you up online," he was saying, "and found your mom's wedding announcement from before you changed your name. I didn't even need to do that. It's easy to find someone you never lost." I struggled to understand what he was saying. "You mean...you could have written to me, or seen me, sooner?" "I wanted to. Almost did, a bunch of times." "Why didn't you? I wish you had." And I did, I wished it so much, imagined how it would have been to know all those years that he was there, thinking of me. "Things seemed different for you," he said, matter-of-fact. "Better. I could tell that from the bits of information I found...like an interview with the parents who were putting their kids in your school when it first started. Or an article about that essay contest you won a couple years ago." "You knew about that?" He nodded. "That one had a picture. I could see just from looking at you that you had a good thing going. Didn't need me coming along and messing it up." "Don't say that," I said quickly. Then: "You were never part of what I wanted to forget." "Nice of you to say, but I know it's not true." I knew what he was thinking, could see that he'd been carrying around the same burden all those years as me. "You didn't do anything wrong." It was getting cold on the porch, and late, and the looming topic scared me. I got up. "Let's go in. I can make coffee or hot chocolate or something?" "I have to go." "No! Already?" I didn't want to let him out of my sight. "Don't worry," he said. "Just have to go to work. I'll be around." "Give me your number. I'll call you." "I don't have a phone right now." "Find me at school," I said, "or anytime. Eat lunch with us tomorrow." He didn't answer. "Really," I continued, "you should meet my friends and stuff." "You have a boyfriend," he finally said. "I saw you guys holding hands." I nodded. "Ethan." "For how long?" "Three months, almost." I couldn't picture Cameron Quick dating anyone, though he must have at some point. If I'd found Ethan, I was sure Cameron had some Ashley or Becca or Caitlin along the way. I didn't ask. "He's nice," I added. "He's..." I don't know what I'd planned to say, but whatever it was it seemed insignificant so I finished that sentence with a shrug. "You lost your lisp." And about twenty-five pounds, I thought. "I guess speech therapy worked for both of us." He smiled. "I always liked that, you know. Your lisp. It was...you." He started down the porch steps. "See you tomorrow, okay?" "Yeah," I said, unable to take my eyes off of him. "Tomorrow.

I struggle with an embarrassing affliction, one that as far as I know doesn’t have a website or support group despite its disabling effects on the lives of those of us who’ve somehow contracted it. I can’t remember exactly when I started noticing the symptoms—it’s just one of those things you learn to live with, I guess. You make adjustments. You hope people don’t notice. The irony, obviously, is having gone into a line of work in which this particular infirmity is most likely to stand out, like being a gimpy tango instructor or an acrophobic flight attendant. The affliction I’m speaking of is moral relativism, and you can imagine the catastrophic effects on a critic’s career if the thing were left to run its course unfettered or I had to rely on my own inner compass alone. To be honest, calling it moral relativism may dignify it too much; it’s more like moral wishy-washiness. Critics are supposed to have deeply felt moral outrage about things, be ready to pronounce on or condemn other people’s foibles and failures at a moment’s notice whenever an editor emails requesting twelve hundred words by the day after tomorrow. The severity of your condemnation is the measure of your intellectual seriousness (especially when it comes to other people’s literary or aesthetic failures, which, for our best critics, register as nothing short of moral turpitude in itself). That’s how critics make their reputations: having take-no-prisoners convictions and expressing them in brutal mots justes. You’d better be right there with that verdict or you’d better just shut the fuck up. But when it comes to moral turpitude and ethical lapses (which happen to be subjects I’ve written on frequently, perversely drawn to the topics likely to expose me at my most irresolute)—it’s like I’m shooting outrage blanks. There I sit, fingers poised on keyboard, one part of me (the ambitious, careerist part) itching to strike, but in my truest soul limply equivocal, particularly when it comes to the many lapses I suspect I’m capable of committing myself, from bad prose to adultery. Every once in a while I succeed in landing a feeble blow or two, but for the most part it’s the limp equivocator who rules the roost—contextualizing, identifying, dithering. And here’s another confession while I’m at it—wow, it feels good to finally come clean about it all. It’s that … once in a while, when I’m feeling especially jellylike, I’ve found myself loitering on the Internet in hopes of—this is embarrassing—cadging a bit of other people’s moral outrage (not exactly in short supply online) concerning whatever subject I’m supposed to be addressing. Sometimes you just need a little shot in the arm, you know? It’s not like I’d crib anyone’s actual sentences (though frankly I have a tough time getting as worked up about plagiarism as other people seem to get—that’s how deep this horrible affliction runs). No, it’s the tranquillity of their moral authority I’m hoping will rub off on me. I confess to having a bit of an online “thing,” for this reason, about New Republic editor-columnist Leon Wieseltier—as everyone knows, one of our leading critical voices and always in high dudgeon about something or other: never fearing to lambaste anyone no matter how far beneath him in the pecking order, never fearing for a moment, when he calls someone out for being preening or self-congratulatory, as he frequently does, that it might be true of himself as well. When I’m in the depths of soft-heartedness, a little dose of Leon is all I need to feel like clambering back on the horse of critical judgment and denouncing someone for something.

According to your holy book, every single Buddhist, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, follower of various minor traditions or sects, those who do not affiliate themselves with a religious tradition and the approximately 2.74 billion humans who have never had the 'privilege' of hearing the word of your Messiah will be sentenced to eternal damnation in a lake of fire—regardless of moral standings or positive worldly accomplishments. If this sounds like a fair proposition to you, then I bite my tongue—but I honestly believe that the majority of Christians do not agree with these doctrinal assertions, and instead categorize themselves as 'Christians' out of cultural familiarity or perhaps out of complete ignorance in regards to the topic.

The Cornell Method The Cornell method is probably the best-known and most widely used note taking method out there. It is a brilliantly simple method that is characterized by how it divides the page you use. To use the Cornell method, first take a page of lined paper. There will usually be a margin on the left of the page. From this margin, measure roughly 6cm in and then draw a line down the page from top to bottom. Next, draw a line across the page six lines up from the bottom of the sheet. (The measurements are not set in stone, so feel free to modify them to your own taste.) This will divide the page into three areas: the section across the bottom, the now extended margin on the left of the page, and a section on the right. The right of the page will be where you will make your “normal notes.” The reduced area will have the effect of encouraging you to take fewer notes as there is simply less space to do so. The section along the bottom of the page is where you write a summary of everything on the page. This will be no more than a couple of sentences, and depending on how you prefer to work, this summary can be written perhaps at the end of the class, later that evening, or on another day. Writing this summary will solidify your understanding of your notes and help cut them down further. The section on the left of the page can be used in a few different ways. You may choose to use this area to write down the most important words, like names, dates, and essential ideas. Another way to use the left side of the page is to record your own reactions to the notes you are taking. This is a brilliant way to encourage active listening, as writing down your personal reactions ensures that you engage fully with the lesson. Don’t worry about writing anything smart or insightful in these reactions. Perhaps comment on how something relates back to another topic, how you find something interesting, or maybe you write a few question marks to denote that you find it confusing. Using the Cornell method is a straightforward technique for note taking, and can be adapted in various ways to fit your own preferences. It can be helpful for studying and testing yourself later on, too. One way to do this is to use the left hand area to write questions that correspond to the right side of the page. You can then test yourself by covering the right side of the page and attempting to answer the questions, slowly revealing the notes and “answers” on the right as you go. You can also test yourself by attempting to recite the summary at the bottom of the page.

Anytime you feel yourself starting to become overwhelmed with either information or feelings, you need to be able to stop. It doesn’t matter whether the conversation involves a minor discussion about breakfast or a major debate about selling the house. The mechanism for stopping a conversation that’s becoming overheated is extremely simple. It can be contained in a one-sentence agreement both parties accept. Here it is: Either party can ask to stop a discussion at any time for any reason. What that means is that whenever you ask to stop talking about something, the other person is obligated to stop talking and give a simple “Okay.” No further discussion occurs, not even “I just need to finish my thought” or “Why can’t I just explain . . . ?” When I suggest this idea to argumentative couples, their typical reply is, “Oh, great. My spouse will shut me up all the time. I’ll never be able to talk about anything that matters to me.” In actual practice, though, that rarely happens. Even the most out-of-control couples have demonstrated that when the people involved have in place a solid agreement to stop talking, both people benefit. That’s because when either person can ask to stop talking when he or she feels overwhelmed, and finds that request respected, each person can begin to trust—often for the first time in years—that bringing up a potentially difficult topic will not automatically escalate into all-out verbal warfare.

It is important to understand that Paul is not just using Abraham as an illustration of the gospel or of his teaching about justification by grace through faith. No, Abraham is the beginning of the gospel.

Ending with a digression, or with an unimportant detail, is particularly to be avoided. If the paragraph forms part of a larger composition, its relation to what precedes, or its function as a part of the whole, may need to be expressed. This can sometimes be done by a mere word or phrase (again; therefore; for the same reason) in the topic sentence. Sometimes, however, it is expedient to precede the topic sentence by one or more sentences of introduction or transition. If more than one such sentence is required, it is generally better to set apart the transitional sentences as a separate paragraph.

Once we start to read the book, the benefit to our own train of thought continues. We’re used to imagining that it’s the ideas explicitly stated in a book that will enrich us, but we may not need the full thoughts of another person to come to a better sense of what we ourselves believe. Often, just a few paragraphs or even parts of sentences can be sufficient to provoke our minds and can nudge us to stop, daydream and reach for a notebook in which we jot down not the thought that we’ve read but the thought that it prompted inside us, which might be quite different and more significant. The book frames the topic for us; it puts the right question to us; it functions as the three dots that start us off … and we do the rest.

To add a note, highlight a single word, multiple words, or a sentence, then tap Note. Additional options include highlighting the selected text, sharing with friends on Goodreads and other social networks, and searching the book, all text, or the Kindle Store. Tap the Menu icon on the options bar to view more options, including opening the dictionary and reporting an error with the content. You can also swipe through the different cards to view the X-Ray topic (if available), dictionary definition, Wikipedia entry, and an option to translate the selected word. Notes will appear

A Tightly Organized Research Program. You will articulate your dissertation project/current project in approximately five sentences that sketch the topic, its data, text or objects of study, its methods, its approach, and its core argument.

In his book Ethics, which he worked on during this time, Bonhoeffer wrote about the way people worship success. The topic fascinated him. He referred to it in his letter from Barcelona many years earlier, in which he observed the fickleness of the crowds at bullfights, how they roared for the toreador one moment and for the bull the next. It was success they wanted, success more than anything. In Ethics, he wrote: In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done. . . . With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means. . . . The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard. God was interested not in success, but in obedience. If one obeyed God and was willing to suffer defeat and whatever else came one’s way, God would show a kind of success that the world couldn’t imagine. But this was the narrow path, and few would take it.

Three Opening Topics of Conversation Use your information-gathering skills to devise topics that would interest you both. As your conversation proceeds, listen carefully to the answers to your questions; they will provide you with material for further conversation. 1. The situation you’re both in. For example, if you meet someone in a continuing-education class, you know that you share an interest in learning, as well as in the topic of the course itself. Questions such as “Have you taken other adult education classes?” or “How did you become interested in English history?” should get the ball rolling. If you meet someone at a party, you might start off by talking about how you know the people throwing the party. “Oh, you and Bob went to sailing camp together? Do you still sail?” And so on. Take your cues from them, and let them know you are interested by following up—both verbally with questions, and nonverbally with your body language. 2. The other person. First, observe what the person is doing, wearing, saying, or reading. Look for things you share in common, or find something that you’d like to know more about. (But watch their body language to be sure they are approachable. A person who is busy changing a tire or engrossed in a book may not want to be disturbed, even by friendly, approachable you.) 3. Yourself. Talking about yourself is a step leading toward conversational intimacy. But it is only effective if you provide an easy way for you intended companion to turn the conversation around to him or her. A compliment such as “I wish I had your sense of color” starts out with you, but focuses on the other person. It makes her feel immediately appreciated, and offers her a chance to take the conversation further if she likes. When someone mentions something you know about or like, indicate it by nodding or by a short sentence (“I’ve been interested in gardening for years!”). Be careful not to talk about yourself too much—especially at first. That can be a real turnoff.

Keeping it Going Asking questions may be the best way of keeping a conversation going. Not only can you express interest in what is being said, but you also demonstrate a continued desire to get to know the other person. Asking questions to find areas of common interest is somewhat like fishing: You throw out a line more times than you get a bite. So keep asking open-ended questions until you find an area that seems of interest to that person. Then, express your own interest or curiosity. There are two types of questions, and a combination of both will serve you best. 1. Closed-ended: “Yes.” “No.” “True.” “False.” These are dead-end answers—a one- or two-word reply that probably leads nowhere. A question such as “Where are you from?” can be closed-ended if the person answers with the place name only. Follow up with an open-ended question, and you may save the conversation. But asking too many closed-ended questions in a row will seem like interrogation. Balance the conversation out with a variety of questions and comments, and you will discover greater interest and depth. 2. Open-ended: Open-ended questions are like essay questions—they promote thoughtful answers of several sentences, not just one or two words. Such questions include: “How?” “Why?” “In what way?” When you ask the questions, you have control in the conversation. Don’t waste the opportunity by asking general questions such as “What’s new?” or “Tell me about yourself.” Be specific. Of course, asking open-ended questions takes practice. Use the guidelines throughout this chapter to develop topics of interest between you.

This child-directed speech may be characterized by a slower rate of delivery, higher pitch, more varied intonation, shorter, simpler sentence patterns, stress on key words, frequent repetition, and paraphrase. Furthermore, topics of conversation emphasize the child’s immediate environment, picture books, or experiences that the adult knows the child has had. Adults often repeat the content of a child’s utterance, but they expand or recast it into a grammatically correct sentence. For example, when Peter says, ‘Dump truck! Dump truck! Fall! Fall!’, Lois responds, ‘Yes, the dump truck fell down.

The world does not have enough topic sentences.

We smashed their schools, burned them, and shot people based on the time of night they were outside. They dressed up like our allies and blew themselves up, when they weren’t murdering the families of our actual allies and throwing their headless bodies into the Tigris. Write a five paragraph essay on that. Make sure each paragraph has a topic sentence.

But I’m not talking about that kind of passive skimming. To actively skim the body of an article or chapter, you should read the top of each paragraph. A good writer starts each paragraph with a topic sentence, followed by supporting facts or arguments. Once you’ve read the first sentence, you can decide whether it’s worth reading the rest of the paragraph. To figure out whether you should read the rest of the paragraph, you should answer this critical question: will the rest of the paragraph help you achieve one of the reading purposes that I mentioned earlier? If you’re reading for specific facts or to discover new sources, the question is easy to answer: read the rest of the paragraph only if it includes such a fact or source.

Again, we want our writing to support effective reading. That means doing two things: 1. Dividing the body with headings or subtitles to show the structure of the document. 2. Starting each paragraph with a topic sentence so readers can easily read off the tops of the paragraphs. Readers should be able to follow the progression of your argument by reading only these topic sentences; the rest of each paragraph should provide factual or analytic support for the topic sentence.

Key features Always write in small chunks (also-called blocks ). Unlike many paragraphs, only one topic per chunk. Nothing extra. Chunks can contain several sentences. Label very chunk with an informative, relevant, short, bold-face title. Standards for organizing and sequencing large documents. Diagrams and illustrations can be chunks. Use them. Possible to cluster most of the 40 sentence types into seven categories: procedure, process, structure, concept, fact, classification, principle. Another 160 chunk-types available for Report Documents and Scientific and Technical Reports. About 400,000 technical and business writers world-wide have been taught to write structured writing since 1969.

...At the same time, something odd was happening to my ability to converse. I had always enjoyed engaging in arguments, regardless of topic. I regarded them as a sort of game (not that this is in any way unique). Suddenly, however, I couldn't talk—more accurately, I couldn't stand listening to myself talk . I started to hear a “voice” inside my head, commenting on my opinions. Every time I said something, it said something— something critical. The voice employed a standard refrain, delivered in a somewhat bored and matter-of-fact tone: You don't believe that. That isn't true. You don't believe that. That isn't true. The “voice” applied such comments to almost every phrase I spoke. I couldn't understand what to make of this. I knew the source of the commentary was part of me, but this knowledge only increased my confusion. Which part, precisely, was me— the talking part or the criticizing part ? If it was the talking part, then what was the criticizing part? If it was the criticizing part—well, then: how could virtually everything I said be untrue? In my ignorance and confusion, I decided to experiment. I tried only to say things that my internal reviewer would pass unchallenged. This meant that I really had to listen to what I was saying, that I spoke much less often, and that I would frequently stop, midway through a sentence, feel embarrassed, and reformulate my thoughts. I soon noticed that I felt much less agitated and more confident when I only said things that the “voice” did not object to. This came as a definite relief. My experiment had been a success; I was the criticizing part. Nonetheless, it took me a long time to reconcile myself to the idea that almost all my thoughts weren't real, weren't true—or, at least, weren't mine. All the things I “believed” were things I thought sounded good, admirable, respectable, courageous. They weren't my things, however—I had stolen them. Most of them I had taken from books. Having “understood” them, abstractly, I presumed I had a right to them—presumed that I could adopt them, as if they were mine: presumed that they were me . My head was stuffed full of the ideas of others; stuffed full of arguments I could not logically refute. I did not know then that an irrefutable argument is not necessarily true, nor that the right to identify with certain ideas had to be earned.

Will is an ethics philosopher at Oxford whom I’ve interviewed for several articles. I find he can give perspective on pretty much any topic. “What are you grateful for?” I asked him. “Sometimes I’m just thankful I have arms.” Will’s answer is odd, but I like it. These limbs sticking out from my torso are indeed something to be thankful for. They’re pretty useful. I’m using them to type this sentence right now. “It’s important to try to be grateful for things that wouldn’t even occur to you,” Will advised. It’s hard not to take the existence of arms for granted. But it’s worth the effort.

(I am sometimes overwhelmed by how tough it is to raise kids! You try to praise them to boost them up and all you do is make them feel bad about themselves.) Instead, tell your children that you have high expectations for them. Then, offer constructive feedback if they have poor performance. Offering constructive feedback (which is not the same as criticism) shows that you have high expectations and that you think your child has the ability to meet those expectations. For example, if your son is writing an essay for homework and it isn’t very good, instead of assuming he can’t do better, tell him that he can do better. Offer specific places where he could improve, such as “Why don’t you start with a topic sentence?” or “Perhaps you can describe this part in a little more detail.” Constructive feedback is specific and focused on how to improve, and it is the kind of encouragement that helps kids both believe in their own abilities and improve, which, in turn, helps children stick with activities they might otherwise have struggled with.

I’m feeling reasonably confident thanks to my social preparation routine—a large notecard of potential discussion topics, interesting facts, and small-talk questions. This card is folded and tucked away in my pocket for quick reference, though I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I spent enough time on this one to recite it from memory. The word “muscle” is derived from a Latin term, meaning “little mouse.” The shortest sentence in the Bible is two words. Do you know what they are? What are your biggest fears?

I read her the topics slowly, pausing after each sentence, waiting for her to say something, just an mmhmm or the conversational throw-me-a-bone of okay. The first topic was two paragraphs long. I remember it had the word ivtersectionalities in it. And the word gendered. I waited for her response and for the ways it would encourage me, tor her to tell me I could do this, but I knew from my mother’s total silence that, like me, she’d never before heard these words: my first insight into how accessible to certain vocabularies was a kind of privilege. Of course, I didn’t know to call this privilege, not yet. “You’re right,” my mother said after a moment. “You’re screwed.

I would like you to write about your very deepest thoughts and feeling about an extremely important emotional issue that has affected you and your life. In your writing, I’d like you to really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts. You might tie your topic to your relationships with others, including parents, lovers, friends, or relatives; to your past, your present, or your future; or to who you have been, who you would like to be, or who you are now. You may write about the same general issues or experiences on all days of writing or on different topics each day. All of your writing will be completely confidential. Don’t worry about spelling, sentence structure, or grammar. The only rule is that once you begin writing, continue to do so until your time is up.

As Coates explains, hedges like these “are used to respect the face needs of all participants, to negotiate sensitive topics, and to encourage the participation of others.” These interpersonal tools are especially handy for women, who almost always dive into sensitive territory at some point during their discussions. Coates collected some enlightening data on how women hedge with one another from a group discussion among female friends about Britain’s notorious Yorkshire Ripper case of the early 1980s. The speakers were recalling how, during the hunt for the perpetrator, the police asked the public to consider their family members as suspects. At one point, a woman named Sally revealed that she once thought for a second that the killer might have been her husband. The hedges in her statement are underlined: “Oh god yes well I mean we were living in Yorkshire at the time and I—I mean I. I mean I did/ I sort of thought well could it be John?” These hedges here are not representative of Sally’s indecision—she isn’t hedging or breaking off her sentences due to, as Otto Jespersen said, “talking without having thought out what [she is] going to say.” Sally knows exactly what she wants to get across. But because the topic at hand is so sensitive, she needs the wells and I means so she doesn’t come off as brusque and unfeeling. “Self-disclosure of this kind can be extremely face-threatening,” Coates explains. “Speakers need to hedge their statements.” This is true in so many situations. For instance, saying something along the lines of, “I mean, I just feel like you should maybe, well, try seeing a therapist” is a gentler, easier-to-hear way of saying, “You should see a therapist.” The latter statement, though direct, could come across as cold in the context of a heart-to-heart conversation. The hedged version is more tactful and open, inviting of the listener’s point of view, and leaves space for them to interject or share a different perspective (unlike “You should see a therapist,” which is closed off and doesn’t make room for anyone else’s input).