The Five-Paragraph Essay An overview

The Bare Essentials  Every essay that you write must have at least 500 words (300 words for English 0098).  Each essay must have a clearly written thesis statement.  Each essay must have five paragraphs.  Each essay is allowed a maximum of two Type I errors.  Do NOT use “you” in your essays.

The Introduction  The purpose of the introduction is to introduce the topic and your attitude toward that topic to the audience.  The introduction needs to begin with an attention-getting device to grab your reader’s attention.  The thesis must also be included in the introduction.

The Thesis Statement  The thesis statement needs to contain three elements:  The topic you are writing about  Your attitude or position toward that topic  Your three points of development (or three reasons why you feel the way you do about the topic)

The topic  Make sure that the topic you have chosen to write about is extremely clear to the reader.  Having knowledge about the topic will help you to come up with subtopics more easily.

The attitude or position  Make it clear whether you support or oppose the topic. If a writing prompt is in the form of a yes/no question, do NOT answer with “maybe” or “sometimes”.  If the prompt is not a yes/no question, be sure to have a controlling idea for the entire essay.  Maintain a consistent point of view throughout the essay.

The three points of development  Choose three points that are distinct from one another so that you do not repeat information in two different support paragraphs.  Choose subtopics that are somewhat broad so that you can expand on them by using more specific details. This will help with the word count.

The Support Paragraphs  Support paragraphs need to contain a lot of details and specific examples to support your ideas.  Support paragraphs need to be organized to parallel the thesis sentence.  Each support paragraph must have a topic sentence to indicate the main idea of that paragraph.

More about the support paragraphs  Try to include at least two examples in each support paragraph.  The support paragraphs should be the three longest paragraphs of the essay. If you’re running short on words and need to add more, this is the place to do it.  Use transitions to move more smoothly from one support paragraph to the next.

The Conclusion  Use the conclusion to restate your three main points. This does NOT mean that you are to repeat the thesis word for word.  DO NOT introduce new ideas in the conclusion.  The conclusion should NOT be longer than your shortest support paragraph.