Essay: Honor
Introduction/Topic sentence:
Courage, strength, and dignity is a very hard goal to achieve and to accomplish in ones life. Many have not succeeded in such a gift in their life but they took it for granted.
How can you fix these two sentences or are they correct as is? Do they make any sense?
Sentence one has a plural subject. The predicate must be plural, too. These are goals, not a single goal.
Sentence two makes no sense.
What is a great way to start a compare and contrast essay about honor? I want to compare Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln, the two great honorable men of our history.
First, define "honor." How did each of these men behave honorably? How did they differ in behaving as such? How were they similar?
The second step, after defining "honor," might be to explain WHY you think Abe and Julius were honorable. His assassins felt Caesar had acted dishonorably, did they not?
Whenever you are writing a comparison/contrast paper (paragraph, essay, research paper), you need to plan it out very carefully on paper first.
Try this:
1. Write all the information you know about one of your topics on one page.
2. Write all the information you know about the other topic on another page.
3. Then put them together in this order:
1. Intro
2. All about topic A
~~~2A. detail 1
~~~2B. detail 2
~~~2C. detail 3
~~~2D. detail 4
~~~2E. detail 5
3. All about topic B
~~~3A. detail 1
~~~3B. detail 2
~~~3C. detail 3
~~~3D. detail 4
~~~3E. detail 5
4. Concl.
The number of details for each topic will vary depending on your main points. I would include comparisons (how they are similar) in the introduction and conclusion, but sections 2 and 3 and all those details will be stating and explaining how they are different.
There are two recognized patterns for writing comparison/contrast papers. One is casually referred to as "zig-zag,” but can be very confusing for the reader if you don’t use transitions effectively. The other is topic-by-topic (which is what I've outlined above) and is much easier for the reader to follow.
See http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/comparcontrast.html for further help with comparison/contrast writing.
Once you have organized your information, please re-post if you’d like feedback from someone here.
The sentences in your introduction require some clarifications and modifications to enhance clarity and coherence. Here's a revised version:
Revised introduction/Topic sentence:
Achieving courage, strength, and dignity in life is a formidable goal that eludes many. Sadly, some people fail to recognize the value of these virtues and take them for granted.
Explanation:
- The revised sentences maintain the central idea you intended to convey in your introduction, i.e., the difficulty of attaining courage, strength, and dignity.
- The wording has been adjusted to improve clarity and flow, ensuring that the message is clearly understood by readers.
- In the second sentence, the phrase "such a gift" has been modified to "these virtues" to clearly refer back to courage, strength, and dignity.
- The revised sentences provide a more cohesive and coherent introduction to your essay on honor.