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Contents
Writing
 
Recognize Purpose and Audience
 
Recognize Unity, Focus, and Development in Writing
Point of View and Distracting Details
Recognizing Revisions
Thesis Statements and Topic Sentences
 
Recognize Effective Organization in Writing
 
Recognize Effective Sentences
 
Recognize Edited American English Usage
 
Revision Strategies
 
Practice Writing Tests
 
Write an Organized, Developed Composition
 

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Recognize Unity, Focus, and Development in Writing

Recognizing Revisions that Improve the Unity and Focus of a Piece of Writing

A well-written paragraph or essay will be unified; that is, every sentence will contribute to the reader’s understanding of the main idea. This main idea, usually called a thesis statement, states the subject and gives the writer’s opinion about that subject. Focus on that main idea promotes unity in the essay. Just as a photograph that is fuzzy and out of focus is difficult to look at, a paragraph or essay that does not have a clear point to make is difficult to understand. Consider the following section of a paragraph, for example:

1Just getting accepted into a college may be difficult. 2First, the prospective student must face mountains of paperwork for each college under consideration. 3The applications alone may be pages long. 4In fact, one college requires its applicants to write an essay of 1,000-1,500 words stating life goals. 5Life goals are important, of course, but it is often very difficult to write about them without sounding like every other college student. 6General statements about wanting a family, a good career and a house with four bedrooms do not take very many words. 7Second, if a student is trying to get financial aid, there is even more paperwork . . . .

Can you see that the writer had as his/her purpose to discuss the difficulties of getting into college, but that after the fourth sentence, the focus began to change to the particular essay that one college required and the difficulties of writing that essay? The writer has lost the unity of the paragraph and/or the entire essay in just these few sentences.


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