Premise

Many courses focus on how to craft great topic sentences, as well as body paragraph analysis. But what about concluding paragraph sentences?

There is not necessarily one “right” answer. But there are certainly considerations as you approach wrapping up your paragraphs in both a clear and meaningful manner.

Examples

Let’s take a look at the ending of this paragraph from an actual student draft:

The author uses the same method to emphasize the difficulty of distinguishing hate speech, mentioning that “if you do not pay close enough attention, a lot of hate speech will slip by under the impression of free speech” (para. 5).

It’s interesting to consider this example out of context. There is certainly some nice diction and detail. But if you feel like this sentence functions more like a piece of analytical evidence, you’re not alone. The placement of this quoted evidence at the end of the paragraph does little to summarize that paragraph’s overall point.

You could argue that certain cases, such as this one, try to use a quote to emphasize the analytical commentary via a specific further example. While this rhetorical choice can indeed sometimes be a good one, that decision is typically not the most effective method for many papers (but again, certain speeches, presentations, etc. might vary). Situation matters, and here, we need a “wrap-up” of the effectiveness of the technique analyzed in this paragraph instead. A strong edit here might look something more like this:

The author uses the same method to emphasize the difficulty of distinguishing hate speech, mentioning that “if you do not pay close enough attention, a lot of hate speech will slip by under the impression of free speech” (para. 5). As continually seen, the focus here is on this idea of how many examples can be pointed to in order to demonstrate to a wide audience of student readers why they should care about this issue–regardless of their preconceived notions on the subject matter.

This “fix” certainly sounds like a more specific form of concluding commentary, referring back to what must have been the main point, idea, and purpose as identified by the topic sentences and previous analysis within this paragraph. Such clarity is exactly what you want to strive for.

Again, note that these rules for concluding paragraphs are in regards to specific types of papers—in this case: academic ones like rhetorical analyses and researched arguments. These same rules, for example, would not necessarily apply in other situations–say, in something like a creative fiction piece where the rules can “bend,” relatively speaking.

This is not to say that these rules we talk about here, therefore, are not important. The reality is just that different circumstances and goals call for different expectations and forms. If you take this document here, for example, you can see how the relatively concise paragraphs by comparison to an academic paper are deliberately chosen. The situation and goals of disseminating information to audiences in a thoughtfully paced manner, simply call for this differing format to most effectively get the point across.

Further Considerations

Some basic further rules for crafting quality concluding paragraphs can go a long way (again, in this case, for academic essays!):

• Don’t introduce new points as concluding sentences. This can be a tempting option, and it may apply if you want to “foreshadow” the next point in the following paragraph. But most of the time, the emphasis should be on concluding the idea established and analyzed beforehand.
• Break up into multiple, more emphatic sentences. Sometimes as students are working to conclude a paragraph, they end up going on a bit of a “ramble.” Whether or not this ramble is grammatically correct doesn’t matter so much as the fact that overly long sentences can lose readers’ attention. Take time to consider breaking up such instances. Like with thesis statements, it’s actually okay to need more than one sentence to make your point!
• Try to be “original.” This point might sound like an obvious one, but it’s actually much more subtle of an issue. Such a problem often arises, for example, in rhetorical analysis papers where there’s a focus on how the audience is impacted. E.g., a paper becomes very boring when each paragraph basically concludes with “the audience is convinced by this technique.” Instead, you want to consider—and capture—the specific or unique aspect from whatever you’re analyzing in a more particular way.
• Different parts of sections have different concluding sentence emphasis. This makes sense if you break your work up, first, into “sections.” Consider an example where you have several paragraphs in the middle of your paper that, 1) start by introducing that you’re switching into counterarguments, 2) continue by listing those counterarguments, and 3) conclude the overall impact of the listed counterargument paragraphs. Numbers 1 and 3 here might only be a paragraph each to start and end this “section,” whereas number 2 might have several paragraphs: one for each specific counterargument. But the concluding sentences for each of them might be somewhat characterized by the fact that they are working at different points within this section—with different levels of understanding either established or yet-to-be-established by the previous and upcoming paragraphs respectively. All of this consideration should impact the details of not just each paragraph, but also their concluding sentences.
• Look toward examples of concluding sentences whenever you can. Particularly, sample papers can be a wonderful source to see how these such elements can (and should be) be integrated within your work. You can then also see which options are maybe best to be avoided if a sample is identified as “not quite the best example.” It’s just as useful to know what to do as it is to know what not to do!

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