Answered By: James Whitmer
Last Updated: Jun 09, 2020     Views: 39

A body paragraph in an academic essay typically has four major parts:

  1. The topic sentence, or first sentence, which conveys the main idea or claim of the paragraph and how it supports the thesis.
  2. Any number of main points that support the topic sentence. These can be referred to as reasons, major support, or sub-claims, and they give more specific explanations of why the topic sentence is valid.
  3. Any amount of evidence that supports each main point. This is where the paragraph gets most specific, by bringing up photos, videos, examples, quotes, anecdotes, descriptions, statistics, or a variety of other means to support each of its main points.
  4. The concluding sentence, or last sentence, which reinforces the main idea or claim of the paragraph by stating it in a different way. This will usually be done by building on the evidence and main points you provided.

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