Writing

Four components of an effective introductory paragraph

Hook, topic, tone, thesis

Hook

A device used to grab a readers attention. Often in the form of interesting, surprising, or provocative information.

Topic

The subject of a reading.

Tone

The feeling or attitude that a writer expresses toward a topic.

Thesis

An overall argument, idea, or belief that a writer uses as the basis for a work.

The four sentence types

Simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex

Simple sentence

Contains a subject and a predicate.

Predicate

Part of a sentence or a clause that has a verb and any modifiers or objects.

Compound sentence

Composed of two or more independent clauses joined together using proper punctuation.

Complex sentence

Composed of an independent clause and a dependent clause.

Compound-complex sentence

Where one or both of the independent clauses has a subordination clause, relative clause, or both.

Independent clause

Part of a sentence that contains a subject and a predicate. Can stand on its own as a complete sentence.

Dependent clause

Part of a sentence that contains a subject and a verb but does not express a complete thought. Cannot stand on its own as a sentence.

Relative pronoun

A word that replaces a noun that it relates to.”what, who, whom, whose, whomever, and which” Introduces a relative clause.