A good topic sentence will provide information about the content of the paragraph and relate to the thesis. Below are some of my topic sentences, and I will comment whether these are successful in relating to my thesis and providing an overview of the content of the paragraph.

Here is the topic sentence of the first body paragraph of my RIP essay:

"As with many websites, the demographic of Buzzfeed is a younger crowd: typically teenagers and young adults."

This topic sentence is successful in giving an overview of what the paragraph will contain. Based on this sentence, the reader knows that the paragraph will discuss some aspect of audience awareness. I do not, however, relate this to my thesis nor do I say whether the paragraph will be about the audience of my RIP. For this reason, the topic sentence is not as successful as it could have been had I analyzed my topic sentences prior to this assignment.

Here is another topic sentence from the second body paragraph of my RIP essay:

"One particularly effective move I used was to incorporate social media sharing and a Twitter sidebar of the publisher."

In this topic sentence, I specify one of the moves I used as being the incorporation of "social media sharing." I specify how I did this by stating that it was through the use of a "Twitter sidebar of the publisher." Specifying this and establishing that the move was successful overall makes this an effective topic sentence. It relates to my thesis and provides a detailed, yet simplified representation of the entire paragraph.