how do you end the first paragraph of an essay

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How to Conclude an Essay (with Examples)

Last Updated: April 3, 2023 Fact Checked

Writing a Strong Conclusion

What to avoid, brainstorming tricks.

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams and by wikiHow staff writer, Aly Rusciano . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,208,591 times.

So, you’ve written an outstanding essay and couldn’t be more proud. But now you have to write the final paragraph. The conclusion simply summarizes what you’ve already written, right? Well, not exactly. Your essay’s conclusion should be a bit more finessed than that. Luckily, you’ve come to the perfect place to learn how to write a conclusion. We’ve put together this guide to fill you in on everything you should and shouldn’t do when ending an essay. Follow our advice, and you’ll have a stellar conclusion worthy of an A+ in no time.

Things You Should Know

• Rephrase your thesis to include in your final paragraph to bring the essay full circle.
• End your essay with a call to action, warning, or image to make your argument meaningful.
• Keep your conclusion concise and to the point, so you don’t lose a reader’s attention.
• Do your best to avoid adding new information to your conclusion and only emphasize points you’ve already made in your essay.

• “All in all”
• “Ultimately”
• “Furthermore”
• “As a consequence”
• “As a result”

• Make sure to write your main points in a new and unique way to avoid repetition.

• Let’s say this is your original thesis statement: “Allowing students to visit the library during lunch improves campus life and supports academic achievement.”
• Restating your thesis for your conclusion could look like this: “Evidence shows students who have access to their school’s library during lunch check out more books and are more likely to complete their homework.”
• The restated thesis has the same sentiment as the original while also summarizing other points of the essay.

• “When you use plastic water bottles, you pollute the ocean. Switch to using a glass or metal water bottle instead. The planet and sea turtles will thank you.”
• “The average person spends roughly 7 hours on their phone a day, so there’s no wonder cybersickness is plaguing all generations.”
• “Imagine walking on the beach, except the soft sand is made up of cigarette butts. They burn your feet but keep washing in with the tide. If we don’t clean up the ocean, this will be our reality.”
• “ Lost is not only a show that changed the course of television, but it’s also a reflection of humanity as a whole.”
• “If action isn’t taken to end climate change today, the global temperature will dangerously rise from 4.5 to 8 °F (−15.3 to −13.3 °C) by 2100.”

• Focus on your essay's most prevalent or important parts. What key points do you want readers to take away or remember about your essay?

• For instance, instead of writing, “That’s why I think that Abraham Lincoln was the best American President,” write, “That’s why Abraham Lincoln was the best American President.”
• There’s no room for ifs, ands, or buts—your opinion matters and doesn’t need to be apologized for!

• For instance, words like “firstly,” “secondly,” and “thirdly” may be great transition statements for body paragraphs but are unnecessary in a conclusion.

• For instance, say you began your essay with the idea that humanity’s small sense of sense stems from space’s vast size. Try returning to this idea in the conclusion by emphasizing that as human knowledge grows, space becomes smaller.

• For example, you could extend an essay on the television show Orange is the New Black by bringing up the culture of imprisonment in America.

Community Q&A

• Always review your essay after writing it for proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and don’t be afraid to revise. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 1
• Ask a friend, family member, or teacher for help if you’re stuck. Sometimes a second opinion is all you need. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 1

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/support/helps/self-help-resources/grammar/transition-signals
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/argument_papers/conclusions.html
• ↑ http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/conclude.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions
• ↑ https://www.pittsfordschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=542&dataid=4677&FileName=conclusions1.pdf
• ↑ https://www.cuyamaca.edu/student-support/tutoring-center/files/student-resources/how-to-write-a-good-conclusion.pdf
• ↑ https://library.sacredheart.edu/c.php?g=29803&p=185935

About This Article

To end an essay, start your conclusion with a phrase that makes it clear your essay is coming to a close, like "In summary," or "All things considered." Then, use a few sentences to briefly summarize the main points of your essay by rephrasing the topic sentences of your body paragraphs. Finally, end your conclusion with a call to action that encourages your readers to do something or learn more about your topic. In general, try to keep your conclusion between 5 and 7 sentences long. For more tips from our English co-author, like how to avoid common pitfalls when writing an essay conclusion, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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It’s the roadmap to your essay, it’s the forecast for your argument, it’s...your introduction paragraph, and writing one can feel pretty intimidating. The introduction paragraph is a part of just about every kind of academic writing , from persuasive essays to research papers. But that doesn’t mean writing one is easy!

If trying to write an intro paragraph makes you feel like a Muggle trying to do magic, trust us: you aren’t alone. But there are some tips and tricks that can make the process easier—and that’s where we come in.

In this article, we’re going to explain how to write a captivating intro paragraph by covering the following info:  

• A discussion of what an introduction paragraph is and its purpose in an essay
• An overview of the most effective introduction paragraph format, with explanations of the three main parts of an intro paragraph
• An analysis of real intro paragraph examples, with a discussion of what works and what doesn’t
• A list of four top tips on how to write an introduction paragraph

Are you ready? Let’s begin!

What Is an Introduction Paragraph? 

An introduction paragraph is the first paragraph of an essay , paper, or other type of academic writing. Argumentative essays , book reports, research papers, and even personal  essays are common types of writing that require an introduction paragraph. Whether you’re writing a research paper for a science course or an argumentative essay for English class , you’re going to have to write an intro paragraph. 

So what’s the purpose of an intro paragraph? As a reader’s first impression of your essay, the intro paragraph should introduce the topic of your paper. 

Your introduction will also state any claims, questions, or issues that your paper will focus on. This is commonly known as your paper’s thesis . This condenses the overall point of your paper into one or two short sentences that your reader can come back and reference later.

But intro paragraphs need to do a bit more than just introduce your topic. An intro paragraph is also supposed to grab your reader’s attention. The intro paragraph is your chance to provide just enough info and intrigue to make your reader say, “Hey, this topic sounds interesting. I think I’ll keep reading this essay!” That can help your essay stand out from the crowd.

In most cases, an intro paragraph will be relatively short. A good intro will be clear, brief, purposeful, and focused. While there are some exceptions to this rule, it’s common for intro paragraphs to consist of three to five sentences . 

Effectively introducing your essay’s topic, purpose, and getting your reader invested in your essay sounds like a lot to ask from one little paragraph, huh? In the next section, we’ll demystify the intro paragraph format by breaking it down into its core parts . When you learn how to approach each part of an intro, writing one won’t seem so scary!

Once you figure out the three parts of an intro paragraph, writing one will be a piece of cake!

The 3 Main Parts of an Intro Paragraph

In general, an intro paragraph is going to have three main parts: a hook, context, and a thesis statement . Each of these pieces of the intro plays a key role in acquainting the reader with the topic and purpose of your essay. 

Below, we’ll explain how to start an introduction paragraph by writing an effective hook, providing context, and crafting a thesis statement. When you put these elements together, you’ll have an intro paragraph that does a great job of making a great first impression on your audience!

Intro Paragraph Part 1: The Hook

When it comes to how to start an introduction paragraph, o ne of the most common approaches is to start with something called a hook. 

What does hook mean here, though? Think of it this way: it’s like when you start a new Netflix series: you look up a few hours (and a few episodes) later and you say, “Whoa. I guess I must be hooked on this show!” 

That’s how the hook is supposed to work in an intro paragrap h: it should get your reader interested enough that they don’t want to press the proverbial “pause” button while they’re reading it . In other words, a hook is designed to grab your reader’s attention and keep them reading your essay! 

This means that the hook comes first in the intro paragraph format—it’ll be the opening sentence of your intro. 

It’s important to realize  that there are many different ways to write a good hook. But generally speaking, hooks must include these two things: what your topic is, and the angle you’re taking on that topic in your essay. 

One approach to writing a hook that works is starting with a general, but interesting, statement on your topic. In this type of hook, you’re trying to provide a broad introduction to your topic and your angle on the topic in an engaging way . 

For example, if you’re writing an essay about the role of the government in the American healthcare system, your hook might look something like this: 

There's a growing movement to require that the federal government provide affordable, effective healthcare for all Americans. 

This hook introduces the essay topic in a broad way (government and healthcare) by presenting a general statement on the topic. But the assumption presented in the hook can also be seen as controversial, which gets readers interested in learning more about what the writer—and the essay—has to say.

In other words, the statement above fulfills the goals of a good hook: it’s intriguing and provides a general introduction to the essay topic.

Intro Paragraph Part 2: Context

Once you’ve provided an attention-grabbing hook, you’ll want to give more context about your essay topic. Context refers to additional details that reveal the specific focus of your paper. So, whereas the hook provides a general introduction to your topic, context starts helping readers understand what exactly you’re going to be writing about

You can include anywhere from one to several sentences of context in your intro, depending on your teacher’s expectations, the length of your paper, and complexity of your topic. In these context-providing sentences, you want to begin narrowing the focus of your intro. You can do this by describing a specific issue or question about your topic that you’ll address in your essay. It also helps readers start to understand why the topic you’re writing about matters and why they should read about it. 

So, what counts as context for an intro paragraph? Context can be any important details or descriptions that provide background on existing perspectives, common cultural attitudes, or a specific situation or controversy relating to your essay topic. The context you include should acquaint your reader with the issues, questions, or events that motivated you to write an essay on your topic...and that your reader should know in order to understand your thesis. 

For instance, if you’re writing an essay analyzing the consequences of sexism in Hollywood, the context you include after your hook might make reference to the #metoo and #timesup movements that have generated public support for victims of sexual harassment. 

The key takeaway here is that context establishes why you’re addressing your topic and what makes it important. It also sets you up for success on the final piece of an intro paragraph: the thesis statement.

Elle Woods' statement offers a specific point of view on the topic of murder...which means it could serve as a pretty decent thesis statement!

Intro Paragraph Part 3: The Thesis

The final key part of how to write an intro paragraph is the thesis statement. The thesis statement is the backbone of your introduction: it conveys your argument or point of view on your topic in a clear, concise, and compelling way . The thesis is usually the last sentence of your intro paragraph. 

Whether it’s making a claim, outlining key points, or stating a hypothesis, your thesis statement will tell your reader exactly what idea(s) are going to be addressed in your essay. A good thesis statement will be clear, straightforward, and highlight the overall point you’re trying to make.

Some instructors also ask students to include an essay map as part of their thesis. An essay map is a section that outlines the major topics a paper will address. So for instance, say you’re writing a paper that argues for the importance of public transport in rural communities. Your thesis and essay map might look like this: 

Having public transport in rural communities helps people improve their economic situation by giving them reliable transportation to their job, reducing the amount of money they spend on gas, and providing new and unionized work .

The underlined section is the essay map because it touches on the three big things the writer will talk about later. It literally maps out the rest of the essay!

So let’s review: Your thesis takes the idea you’ve introduced in your hook and context and wraps it up. Think of it like a television episode: the hook sets the scene by presenting a general statement and/or interesting idea that sucks you in. The context advances the plot by describing the topic in more detail and helping readers understand why the topic is important. And finally, the thesis statement provides the climax by telling the reader what you have to say about the topic. 

The thesis statement is the most important part of the intro. Without it, your reader won’t know what the purpose of your essay is! And for a piece of writing to be effective, it needs to have a clear purpose. Your thesis statement conveys that purpose , so it’s important to put careful thought into writing a clear and compelling thesis statement. 

How To Write an Introduction Paragraph: Example and Analysis

Now that we’ve provided an intro paragraph outline and have explained the three key parts of an intro paragraph, let’s take a look at an intro paragraph in action.

To show you how an intro paragraph works, we’ve included a sample introduction paragraph below, followed by an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses.

Example of Introduction Paragraph

While college students in the U.S. are struggling with how to pay for college, there is another surprising demographic that’s affected by the pressure to pay for college: families and parents. In the face of tuition price tags that total more than $100,000 (as a low estimate), families must make difficult decisions about how to save for their children’s college education. Charting a feasible path to saving for college is further complicated by the FAFSA’s estimates for an “Expected Family Contribution”—an amount of money that is rarely feasible for most American families. Due to these challenging financial circumstances and cultural pressure to give one’s children the best possible chance of success in adulthood, many families are going into serious debt to pay for their children’s college education. The U.S. government should move toward bearing more of the financial burden of college education. 

Example of Introduction Paragraph: Analysis

Before we dive into analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this example intro paragraph, let’s establish the essay topic. The sample intro indicates that t he essay topic will focus on one specific issue: who should cover the cost of college education in the U.S., and why. Both the hook and the context help us identify the topic, while the thesis in the last sentence tells us why this topic matters to the writer—they think the U.S. Government needs to help finance college education. This is also the writer’s argument, which they’ll cover in the body of their essay. 

Now that we’ve identified the essay topic presented in the sample intro, let’s dig into some analysis. To pin down its strengths and weaknesses, we’re going to use the following three questions to guide our example of introduction paragraph analysis: 

• Does this intro provide an attention-grabbing opening sentence that conveys the essay topic? 
• Does this intro provide relevant, engaging context about the essay topic? 
• Does this intro provide a thesis statement that establishes the writer’s point of view on the topic and what specific aspects of the issue the essay will address? 

Now, let’s use the questions above to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this sample intro paragraph. 

Does the Intro Have a Good Hook? 

First, the intro starts out with an attention-grabbing hook . The writer starts by presenting  an assumption (that the U.S. federal government bears most of the financial burden of college education), which makes the topic relatable to a wide audience of readers. Also note that the hook relates to the general topic of the essay, which is the high cost of college education. 

The hook then takes a surprising turn by presenting a counterclaim : that American families, rather than students, feel the true burden of paying for college. Some readers will have a strong emotional reaction to this provocative counterclaim, which will make them want to keep reading! As such, this intro provides an effective opening sentence that conveys the essay topic. 

Does the Intro Give Context?

T he second, third, and fourth sentences of the intro provide contextual details that reveal the specific focus of the writer’s paper . Remember: the context helps readers start to zoom in on what the paper will focus on, and what aspect of the general topic (college costs) will be discussed later on. 

The context in this intro reveals the intent and direction of the paper by explaining why the issue of families financing college is important. In other words, the context helps readers understand why this issue matters , and what aspects of this issue will be addressed in the paper.  

To provide effective context, the writer refers to issues (the exorbitant cost of college and high levels of family debt) that have received a lot of recent scholarly and media attention. These sentences of context also elaborate on the interesting perspective included in the hook: that American families are most affected by college costs.

Does the Intro Have a Thesis? 

Finally, this intro provides a thesis statement that conveys the writer’s point of view on the issue of financing college education. This writer believes that the U.S. government should do more to pay for students’ college educations. 

However, the thesis statement doesn’t give us any details about why the writer has made this claim or why this will help American families . There isn’t an essay map that helps readers understand what points the writer will make in the essay.

To revise this thesis statement so that it establishes the specific aspects of the topic that the essay will address, the writer could add the following to the beginning of the thesis statement:

The U.S. government should take on more of the financial burden of college education because other countries have shown this can improve education rates while reducing levels of familial poverty.

Check out the new section in bold. Not only does it clarify that the writer is talking about the pressure put on families, it touches on the big topics the writer will address in the paper: improving education rates and reduction of poverty. So not only do we have a clearer argumentative statement in this thesis, we also have an essay map!  

So, let’s recap our analysis. This sample intro paragraph does an effective job of providing an engaging hook and relatable, interesting context, but the thesis statement needs some work ! As you write your own intro paragraphs, you might consider using the questions above to evaluate and revise your work. Doing this will help ensure you’ve covered all of your bases and written an intro that your readers will find interesting!

4 Tips for How To Write an Introduction Paragraph

Now that we’ve gone over an example of introduction paragraph analysis, let’s talk about how to write an introduction paragraph of your own. Keep reading for four tips for writing a successful intro paragraph for any essay. 

Tip 1: Analyze Your Essay Prompt

If you’re having trouble with how to start an introduction paragraph, analyze your essay prompt! Most teachers give you some kind of assignment sheet, formal instructions, or prompt to set the expectations for an essay they’ve assigned, right? Those instructions can help guide you as you write your intro paragraph!

Because they’ll be reading and responding to your essay, you want to make sure you meet your teacher’s expectations for an intro paragraph . For instance, if they’ve provided specific instructions about how long the intro should be or where the thesis statement should be located, be sure to follow them!

The type of paper you’re writing can give you clues as to how to approach your intro as well. If you’re writing a research paper, your professor might expect you to provide a research question or state a hypothesis in your intro. If you’re writing an argumentative essay, you’ll need to make sure your intro overviews the context surrounding your argument and your thesis statement includes a clear, defensible claim. 

Using the parameters set out by your instructor and assignment sheet can put some easy-to-follow boundaries in place for things like your intro’s length, structure, and content. Following these guidelines can free you up to focus on other aspects of your intro... like coming up with an exciting hook and conveying your point of view on your topic!

Tip 2: Narrow Your Topic

You can’t write an intro paragraph without first identifying your topic. To make your intro as effective as possible, you need to define the parameters of your topic clearly—and you need to be specific. 

For example, let’s say you want to write about college football. “NCAA football” is too broad of a topic for a paper. There is a lot to talk about in terms of college football! It would be tough to write an intro paragraph that’s focused, purposeful, and engaging on this topic. In fact, if you did try to address this whole topic, you’d probably end up writing a book!

Instead, you should narrow broad topics to  identify a specific question, claim, or issue pertaining to some aspect of NCAA football for your intro to be effective. So, for instance, you could frame your topic as, “How can college professors better support NCAA football players in academics?” This focused topic pertaining to NCAA football would give you a more manageable angle to discuss in your paper.

So before you think about writing your intro, ask yourself: Is my essay topic specific, focused, and logical? Does it convey an issue or question that I can explore over the course of several pages? Once you’ve established a good topic, you’ll have the foundation you need to write an effective intro paragraph . 

Once you've figured out your topic, it's time to hit the books!

Tip 3: Do Your Research

This tip is tightly intertwined with the one above, and it’s crucial to writing a good intro: do your research! And, guess what? This tip applies to all papers—even ones that aren’t technically research papers. 

Here’s why you need to do some research: getting the lay of the land on what others have said about your topic—whether that’s scholars and researchers or the mass media— will help you narrow your topic, write an engaging hook, and provide relatable context. 

You don't want to sit down to write your intro without a solid understanding of the different perspectives on your topic. Whether those are the perspectives of experts or the general public, these points of view will help you write your intro in a way that is intriguing and compelling for your audience of readers. 

Tip 4: Write Multiple Drafts

Some say to write your intro first; others say write it last. The truth is, there isn’t a right or wrong time to write your intro—but you do need to have enough time to write multiple drafts . 

Oftentimes, your professor will ask you to write multiple drafts of your paper, which gives you a built-in way to make sure you revise your intro. Another approach you could take is to write out a rough draft of your intro before you begin writing your essay, then revise it multiple times as you draft out your paper. 

Here’s why this approach can work: as you write your paper, you’ll probably come up with new insights on your topic that you didn’t have right from the start. You can use these “light bulb” moments to reevaluate your intro and make revisions that keep it in line with your developing essay draft. 

Once you’ve written your entire essay, consider going back and revising your intro again . You can ask yourself these questions as you evaluate your intro: 

• Is my hook still relevant to the way I’ve approached the topic in my essay?
• Do I provide enough appropriate context to introduce my essay? 
• Now that my essay is written, does my thesis statement still accurately reflect the point of view that I present in my essay?

Using these questions as a guide and putting your intro through multiple revisions will help ensure that you’ve written the best intro for the final draft of your essay. Also, revising your writing is always a good thing to do—and this applies to your intro, too!

What's Next?

Your college essays also need great intro paragraphs. Here’s a guide that focuses on how to write the perfect intro for your admissions essays. 

Of course, the intro is just one part of your college essay . This article will teach you how to write a college essay that makes admissions counselors sit up and take notice.

Are you trying to write an analytical essay? Our step-by-step guide can help you knock it out of the park.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)   

The introduction of an essay plays a critical role in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. It sets the stage for the rest of the essay, establishes the tone and style, and motivates the reader to continue reading. 

Table of Contents

What is an essay introduction , what to include in an essay introduction, how to create an essay structure , step-by-step process for writing an essay introduction , how to write an introduction paragraph , how to write a hook for your essay , how to include background information , how to write a thesis statement .

• Argumentative Essay Introduction Example: 
• Expository Essay Introduction Example 

Literary Analysis Essay Introduction Example

Check and revise – checklist for essay introduction , key takeaways , frequently asked questions .

An introduction is the opening section of an essay, paper, or other written work. It introduces the topic and provides background information, context, and an overview of what the reader can expect from the rest of the work. 1 The key is to be concise and to the point, providing enough information to engage the reader without delving into excessive detail. 

The essay introduction is crucial as it sets the tone for the entire piece and provides the reader with a roadmap of what to expect. Here are key elements to include in your essay introduction: 

• Hook : Start with an attention-grabbing statement or question to engage the reader. This could be a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or a compelling anecdote. 
• Background information : Provide context and background information to help the reader understand the topic. This can include historical information, definitions of key terms, or an overview of the current state of affairs related to your topic. 
• Thesis statement : Clearly state your main argument or position on the topic. Your thesis should be concise and specific, providing a clear direction for your essay. 

Before we get into how to write an essay introduction, we need to know how it is structured. The structure of an essay is crucial for organizing your thoughts and presenting them clearly and logically. It is divided as follows: 2  

• Introduction:  The introduction should grab the reader’s attention with a hook, provide context, and include a thesis statement that presents the main argument or purpose of the essay.  
• Body:  The body should consist of focused paragraphs that support your thesis statement using evidence and analysis. Each paragraph should concentrate on a single central idea or argument and provide evidence, examples, or analysis to back it up.  
• Conclusion:  The conclusion should summarize the main points and restate the thesis differently. End with a final statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Avoid new information or arguments. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write an essay introduction: 

• Start with a Hook : Begin your introduction paragraph with an attention-grabbing statement, question, quote, or anecdote related to your topic. The hook should pique the reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading. 
• Provide Background Information : This helps the reader understand the relevance and importance of the topic. 
• State Your Thesis Statement : The last sentence is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be clear, concise, and directly address the topic of your essay. 
• Preview the Main Points : This gives the reader an idea of what to expect and how you will support your thesis. 
• Keep it Concise and Clear : Avoid going into too much detail or including information not directly relevant to your topic. 
• Revise : Revise your introduction after you’ve written the rest of your essay to ensure it aligns with your final argument. 

Here’s an example of an essay introduction paragraph about the importance of education: 

Education is often viewed as a fundamental human right and a key social and economic development driver. As Nelson Mandela once famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” It is the key to unlocking a wide range of opportunities and benefits for individuals, societies, and nations. In today’s constantly evolving world, education has become even more critical. It has expanded beyond traditional classroom learning to include digital and remote learning, making education more accessible and convenient. This essay will delve into the importance of education in empowering individuals to achieve their dreams, improving societies by promoting social justice and equality, and driving economic growth by developing a skilled workforce and promoting innovation. 

This introduction paragraph example includes a hook (the quote by Nelson Mandela), provides some background information on education, and states the thesis statement (the importance of education). 

This is one of the key steps in how to write an essay introduction. Crafting a compelling hook is vital because it sets the tone for your entire essay and determines whether your readers will stay interested. A good hook draws the reader in and sets the stage for the rest of your essay.  

• Avoid Dry Fact : Instead of simply stating a bland fact, try to make it engaging and relevant to your topic. For example, if you’re writing about the benefits of exercise, you could start with a startling statistic like, “Did you know that regular exercise can increase your lifespan by up to seven years?” 
• Avoid Using a Dictionary Definition : While definitions can be informative, they’re not always the most captivating way to start an essay. Instead, try to use a quote, anecdote, or provocative question to pique the reader’s interest. For instance, if you’re writing about freedom, you could begin with a quote from a famous freedom fighter or philosopher. 
• Do Not Just State a Fact That the Reader Already Knows : This ties back to the first point—your hook should surprise or intrigue the reader. For Here’s an introduction paragraph example, if you’re writing about climate change, you could start with a thought-provoking statement like, “Despite overwhelming evidence, many people still refuse to believe in the reality of climate change.” 

Including background information in the introduction section of your essay is important to provide context and establish the relevance of your topic. When writing the background information, you can follow these steps: 

• Start with a General Statement:  Begin with a general statement about the topic and gradually narrow it down to your specific focus. For example, when discussing the impact of social media, you can begin by making a broad statement about social media and its widespread use in today’s society, as follows: “Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of users worldwide.” 
• Define Key Terms : Define any key terms or concepts that may be unfamiliar to your readers but are essential for understanding your argument. 
• Provide Relevant Statistics:  Use statistics or facts to highlight the significance of the issue you’re discussing. For instance, “According to a report by Statista, the number of social media users is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025.” 
• Discuss the Evolution:  Mention previous research or studies that have been conducted on the topic, especially those that are relevant to your argument. Mention key milestones or developments that have shaped its current impact. You can also outline some of the major effects of social media. For example, you can briefly describe how social media has evolved, including positives such as increased connectivity and issues like cyberbullying and privacy concerns. 
• Transition to Your Thesis:  Use the background information to lead into your thesis statement, which should clearly state the main argument or purpose of your essay. For example, “Given its pervasive influence, it is crucial to examine the impact of social media on mental health.” 

A thesis statement is a concise summary of the main point or claim of an essay, research paper, or other type of academic writing. It appears near the end of the introduction. Here’s how to write a thesis statement: 

• Identify the topic:  Start by identifying the topic of your essay. For example, if your essay is about the importance of exercise for overall health, your topic is “exercise.” 
• State your position:  Next, state your position or claim about the topic. This is the main argument or point you want to make. For example, if you believe that regular exercise is crucial for maintaining good health, your position could be: “Regular exercise is essential for maintaining good health.” 
• Support your position:  Provide a brief overview of the reasons or evidence that support your position. These will be the main points of your essay. For example, if you’re writing an essay about the importance of exercise, you could mention the physical health benefits, mental health benefits, and the role of exercise in disease prevention. 
• Make it specific:  Ensure your thesis statement clearly states what you will discuss in your essay. For example, instead of saying, “Exercise is good for you,” you could say, “Regular exercise, including cardiovascular and strength training, can improve overall health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.” 

Examples of essay introduction 

Here are examples of essay introductions for different types of essays: 

Argumentative Essay Introduction Example:  

Topic: Should the voting age be lowered to 16? 

“The question of whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 has sparked nationwide debate. While some argue that 16-year-olds lack the requisite maturity and knowledge to make informed decisions, others argue that doing so would imbue young people with agency and give them a voice in shaping their future.” 

Expository Essay Introduction Example  

Topic: The benefits of regular exercise 

“In today’s fast-paced world, the importance of regular exercise cannot be overstated. From improving physical health to boosting mental well-being, the benefits of exercise are numerous and far-reaching. This essay will examine the various advantages of regular exercise and provide tips on incorporating it into your daily routine.” 

Text: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee 

“Harper Lee’s novel, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ is a timeless classic that explores themes of racism, injustice, and morality in the American South. Through the eyes of young Scout Finch, the reader is taken on a journey that challenges societal norms and forces characters to confront their prejudices. This essay will analyze the novel’s use of symbolism, character development, and narrative structure to uncover its deeper meaning and relevance to contemporary society.” 

• Engaging and Relevant First Sentence : The opening sentence captures the reader’s attention and relates directly to the topic. 
• Background Information : Enough background information is introduced to provide context for the thesis statement. 
• Definition of Important Terms : Key terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to the audience or are central to the argument are defined. 
• Clear Thesis Statement : The thesis statement presents the main point or argument of the essay. 
• Relevance to Main Body : Everything in the introduction directly relates to and sets up the discussion in the main body of the essay. 

Writing a strong introduction is crucial for setting the tone and context of your essay. Here are the key takeaways for how to write essay introduction: 3  

• Hook the Reader : Start with an engaging hook to grab the reader’s attention. This could be a compelling question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or an anecdote. 
• Provide Background : Give a brief overview of the topic, setting the context and stage for the discussion. 
• Thesis Statement : State your thesis, which is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be concise, clear, and specific. 
• Preview the Structure : Outline the main points or arguments to help the reader understand the organization of your essay. 
• Keep it Concise : Avoid including unnecessary details or information not directly related to your thesis. 
• Revise and Edit : Revise your introduction to ensure clarity, coherence, and relevance. Check for grammar and spelling errors. 
• Seek Feedback : Get feedback from peers or instructors to improve your introduction further. 

The purpose of an essay introduction is to give an overview of the topic, context, and main ideas of the essay. It is meant to engage the reader, establish the tone for the rest of the essay, and introduce the thesis statement or central argument.  

An essay introduction typically ranges from 5-10% of the total word count. For example, in a 1,000-word essay, the introduction would be roughly 50-100 words. However, the length can vary depending on the complexity of the topic and the overall length of the essay.

An essay introduction is critical in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. To ensure its effectiveness, consider incorporating these key elements: a compelling hook, background information, a clear thesis statement, an outline of the essay’s scope, a smooth transition to the body, and optional signposting sentences.  

The process of writing an essay introduction is not necessarily straightforward, but there are several strategies that can be employed to achieve this end. When experiencing difficulty initiating the process, consider the following techniques: begin with an anecdote, a quotation, an image, a question, or a startling fact to pique the reader’s interest. It may also be helpful to consider the five W’s of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how.   For instance, an anecdotal opening could be structured as follows: “As I ascended the stage, momentarily blinded by the intense lights, I could sense the weight of a hundred eyes upon me, anticipating my next move. The topic of discussion was climate change, a subject I was passionate about, and it was my first public speaking event. Little did I know , that pivotal moment would not only alter my perspective but also chart my life’s course.” 

Crafting a compelling thesis statement for your introduction paragraph is crucial to grab your reader’s attention. To achieve this, avoid using overused phrases such as “In this paper, I will write about” or “I will focus on” as they lack originality. Instead, strive to engage your reader by substantiating your stance or proposition with a “so what” clause. While writing your thesis statement, aim to be precise, succinct, and clear in conveying your main argument.  

To create an effective essay introduction, ensure it is clear, engaging, relevant, and contains a concise thesis statement. It should transition smoothly into the essay and be long enough to cover necessary points but not become overwhelming. Seek feedback from peers or instructors to assess its effectiveness. 

References  

• Cui, L. (2022). Unit 6 Essay Introduction.  Building Academic Writing Skills . 
• West, H., Malcolm, G., Keywood, S., & Hill, J. (2019). Writing a successful essay.  Journal of Geography in Higher Education ,  43 (4), 609-617. 
• Beavers, M. E., Thoune, D. L., & McBeth, M. (2023). Bibliographic Essay: Reading, Researching, Teaching, and Writing with Hooks: A Queer Literacy Sponsorship. College English, 85(3), 230-242. 

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• What is an Argumentative Essay? How to Write It (With Examples)
• How to Paraphrase Research Papers Effectively
• How to Cite Social Media Sources in Academic Writing? 
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Traditional Academic Essays In Three Parts

Part i: the introduction.

An introduction is usually the first paragraph of your academic essay. If you’re writing a long essay, you might need 2 or 3 paragraphs to introduce your topic to your reader. A good introduction does 2 things:

• Gets the reader’s attention. You can get a reader’s attention by telling a story, providing a statistic, pointing out something strange or interesting, providing and discussing an interesting quote, etc. Be interesting and find some original angle via which to engage others in your topic.
• Provides a specific and debatable thesis statement. The thesis statement is usually just one sentence long, but it might be longer—even a whole paragraph—if the essay you’re writing is long. A good thesis statement makes a debatable point, meaning a point someone might disagree with and argue against. It also serves as a roadmap for what you argue in your paper.

Part II: The Body Paragraphs

Body paragraphs help you prove your thesis and move you along a compelling trajectory from your introduction to your conclusion. If your thesis is a simple one, you might not need a lot of body paragraphs to prove it. If it’s more complicated, you’ll need more body paragraphs. An easy way to remember the parts of a body paragraph is to think of them as the MEAT of your essay:

Main Idea. The part of a topic sentence that states the main idea of the body paragraph. All of the sentences in the paragraph connect to it. Keep in mind that main ideas are…

• like labels. They appear in the first sentence of the paragraph and tell your reader what’s inside the paragraph.
• arguable. They’re not statements of fact; they’re debatable points that you prove with evidence.
• focused. Make a specific point in each paragraph and then prove that point.

Evidence. The parts of a paragraph that prove the main idea. You might include different types of evidence in different sentences. Keep in mind that different disciplines have different ideas about what counts as evidence and they adhere to different citation styles. Examples of evidence include…

• quotations and/or paraphrases from sources.
• facts , e.g. statistics or findings from studies you’ve conducted.
• narratives and/or descriptions , e.g. of your own experiences.

Analysis. The parts of a paragraph that explain the evidence. Make sure you tie the evidence you provide back to the paragraph’s main idea. In other words, discuss the evidence.

Transition. The part of a paragraph that helps you move fluidly from the last paragraph. Transitions appear in topic sentences along with main ideas, and they look both backward and forward in order to help you connect your ideas for your reader. Don’t end paragraphs with transitions; start with them.

Keep in mind that MEAT does not occur in that order. The “ T ransition” and the “ M ain Idea” often combine to form the first sentence—the topic sentence—and then paragraphs contain multiple sentences of evidence and analysis. For example, a paragraph might look like this: TM. E. E. A. E. E. A. A.

Part III: The Conclusion

A conclusion is the last paragraph of your essay, or, if you’re writing a really long essay, you might need 2 or 3 paragraphs to conclude. A conclusion typically does one of two things—or, of course, it can do both:

• Summarizes the argument. Some instructors expect you not to say anything new in your conclusion. They just want you to restate your main points. Especially if you’ve made a long and complicated argument, it’s useful to restate your main points for your reader by the time you’ve gotten to your conclusion. If you opt to do so, keep in mind that you should use different language than you used in your introduction and your body paragraphs. The introduction and conclusion shouldn’t be the same.
• For example, your argument might be significant to studies of a certain time period .
• Alternately, it might be significant to a certain geographical region .
• Alternately still, it might influence how your readers think about the future . You might even opt to speculate about the future and/or call your readers to action in your conclusion.

Handout by Dr. Liliana Naydan. Do not reproduce without permission.

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The introduction paragraph is the first paragraph of an essay. This paragraph helps your reader be ready to understand your main idea.

Your introduction paragraph should—

grab your reader’s attention introduce the topic of your essay present your thesis

You can visualize the ideas in your introduction paragraph by thinking about an inverted triangle. The ideas in the beginning of your introduction paragraph are general. Then you narrow down the topic to a specific idea.

Grab the reader’s attention and introduce the topic

The very first sentence of your introduction should get your reader interested in your topic. The first sentence of an introduction is called a “hook.” There are many types of hooks: facts, questions, problems, descriptions, etc. There is not one “perfect” hook for each essay. Your hook can help you introduce the general topic of your essay.

As you introduce your topic, make sure to give the reader enough background information about the topic that the reader will be able to understand the thesis.

Present your thesis

The thesis states the main idea, or focus, of the essay. The rest of the essay will give evidence and explanations that show why or how your thesis is true. Your reader will expect to find the main idea in the introduction paragraph, rather than later in the essay.

An effective thesis—

• addresses the prompt if there is one* (i.e., answers the question).
• is usually at the end of the introduction paragraph.
• controls the content of all of the body paragraphs.
• is a complete sentence.
• does not announce the topic (e.g., “I’m going to talk about exercise.”).
• should not simply be a fact (e.g., “Many people exercise.”).
• should not be too general (e.g., “Exercise is good.”).
• should not be too specific (e.g., “Exercise decreases the chance of developing diabetes, heart disease, asthma, osteoporosis, depression, and anxiety.”).
• may state main points (e.g., “Exercise is essential because it improves overall physical and mental health.”).
• may imply main points (e.g., “Exercise is essential for improving our well-being.”)

*In some essays you write, you will not have a specific question to answer. Instead, you may need to choose your own topic. Your essay should still answer a question (e.g., how are typical Japanese and Chinese birthday celebrations similar or different?).

Exercise 1: Identify hooks and general topics.

Identify the type of hook used in each introduction paragraph as well as the general topic.  

1. Working students deal with a lot of stress in their lives every day. Stress is very common for students while they are working because they have a lot of responsibiltities to balance. They have a list of tasks for school and work that can overwhelm their schedules. Feeling stress is normal when there is not enough time to finish all of your responsibilities, but it can have negative results. Instead of avoiding stress, students simply need to learn how to manage it. In order for students to manage stress better, they need to prioritize their tasks, eat well, and get enough sleep.  

Type of hook: __________________ General topic of the paragraph: __________________  

2. Many business owners find that running a business is a lot harder than they thought it was. How business owners decide to manage their business will determine their future success. They have to make important decisions about how to manage their business every day. These decisions include hiring employees, the hours of operation, the products and services that will be provided, and the way the business will be advertised. These decisions impact a lot of people. Successful business owners need to make wise decisions that satisfy employees, customers, and investors.  

Exercise 2: Analyze a thesis.

Read the introduction paragraph below to complete this exercise.  

Prompt: Why is exercise important?  

Thesis: Exercise is essential because it improves overall physical and mental health.  

Use this list of criteria to evaluate the thesis.  

• Does the thesis address the prompt?  
• Is the thesis a complete sentence?  
• Does the thesis announce the topic?  
• Is the thesis simply a fact?  
• Is the thesis too general? Too specific?  
• Are the main points stated or implied?  

Exercise 3: Identify effective thesis statements.

For each prompt, identify which thesis statement is more effective. Write an X on the line next to the more effective thesis statement.  

• _____Thesis #1 Let’s see all of the interesting things you can do in Rome.  
• _____Thesis #2 Rome has a very unique cultural history.  
• _____Thesis #1 An influential leader is open-minded and humble.  
• _____Thesis #2 Some people are born to be leaders and influence the world.  
• _____Thesis #1 There are some ways to solve feeling homesick.  
• _____Thesis #2 Enjoying comforts from home can help combat homesickness.  
• _____Thesis #1 Writing provides more time to plan and revise than speaking.  
• _____Thesis #2 Many people around the world communicate through writing.

Exercise 4: Evaluate thesis statements.

Which sentences are effective thesis statements? Which sentences are not effective thesis statements? On a piece of paper, write “yes” if you think the thesis is effective or “no” if you think it is ineffective. Discuss why each thesis is (or is not) effective.

Exercise 5: Write a thesis.

On a piece of paper, write a thesis for each prompt. Make sure the thesis addresses the prompt clearly.

1. What are weddings like in your country? 2. What problems do smartphones cause in our lives? 3. What are qualities of a true friend? 4. Should video games be prohibited?

This content is provided to you freely by BYU Open Learning Network.

Access it online or download it at https://open.byu.edu/academic_a_writing/introduction_paragra .

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5 Examples of Concluding Words for Essays

4-minute read

• 19th September 2022

If you’re a student writing an essay or research paper, it’s important to make sure your points flow together well. You’ll want to use connecting words (known formally as transition signals) to do this. Transition signals like thus , also , and furthermore link different ideas, and when you get to the end of your work, you need to use these to mark your conclusion. Read on to learn more about transition signals and how to use them to conclude your essays.

Transition Signals

Transition signals link sentences together cohesively, enabling easy reading and comprehension. They are usually placed at the beginning of a sentence and separated from the remaining words with a comma. There are several types of transition signals, including those to:

●  show the order of a sequence of events (e.g., first, then, next)

●  introduce an example (e.g., specifically, for instance)

●  indicate a contrasting idea (e.g., but, however, although)

●  present an additional idea (e.g., also, in addition, plus)

●  indicate time (e.g., beforehand, meanwhile, later)

●  compare (e.g., likewise, similarly)

●  show cause and effect (e.g., thus, as a result)

●  mark the conclusion – which we’ll focus on in this guide.

When you reach the end of an essay, you should start the concluding paragraph with a transition signal that acts as a bridge to the summary of your key points. Check out some concluding transition signals below and learn how you can use them in your writing.

To Conclude…

This is a particularly versatile closing statement that can be used for almost any kind of essay, including both formal and informal academic writing. It signals to the reader that you will briefly restate the main idea. As an alternative, you can begin the summary with “to close” or “in conclusion.” In an argumentative piece, you can use this phrase to indicate a call to action or opinion:

To conclude, Abraham Lincoln was the best president because he abolished slavery.

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As Has Been Demonstrated…

To describe how the evidence presented in your essay supports your argument or main idea, begin the concluding paragraph with “as has been demonstrated.” This phrase is best used for research papers or articles with heavy empirical or statistical evidence.

As has been demonstrated by the study presented above, human activities are negatively altering the climate system.

The Above Points Illustrate…

As another transitional phrase for formal or academic work, “the above points illustrate” indicates that you are reiterating your argument and that the conclusion will include an assessment of the evidence you’ve presented.

The above points illustrate that children prefer chocolate over broccoli.

In a Nutshell…

A simple and informal metaphor to begin a conclusion, “in a nutshell” prepares the reader for a summary of your paper. It can work in narratives and speeches but should be avoided in formal situations.

In a nutshell, the Beatles had an impact on musicians for generations to come.

Overall, It Can Be Said…

To recap an idea at the end of a critical or descriptive essay, you can use this phrase at the beginning of the concluding paragraph. “Overall” means “taking everything into account,” and it sums up your essay in a formal way. You can use “overall” on its own as a transition signal, or you can use it as part of a phrase.

Overall, it can be said that art has had a positive impact on humanity.

Proofreading and Editing

Transition signals are crucial to crafting a well-written and cohesive essay. For your next writing assignment, make sure you include plenty of transition signals, and check out this post for more tips on how to improve your writing. And before you turn in your paper, don’t forget to have someone proofread your work. Our expert editors will make sure your essay includes all the transition signals necessary for your writing to flow seamlessly. Send in a free 500-word sample today!

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How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay

By the time you get to the final paragraph of your paper, you have already done so much work on your essay, so all you want to do is to wrap it up as quickly as possible. You’ve already made a stunning introduction, proven your argument, and structured the whole piece as supposed – who cares about making a good conclusion paragraph?

The only thing you need to remember is that the conclusion of an essay is not just the last paragraph of an academic paper where you restate your thesis and key arguments. A concluding paragraph is also your opportunity to have a final impact on your audience. 

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How to write a conclusion paragraph that leaves a lasting impression – In this guide, the team at EssayPro is going to walk you through the process of writing a perfect conclusion step by step. Additionally, we will share valuable tips and tricks to help students of all ages impress their readers at the last moment.

Instead of Intro: What Is a Conclusion?

Before we can move on, let’s take a moment here to define the conclusion itself. According to the standard conclusion definition, it is pretty much the last part of something, its result, or end. However, this term is rather broad and superficial.

When it comes to writing academic papers, a concluding statement refers to an opinion, judgment, suggestion, or position arrived at by logical reasoning (through the arguments provided in the body of the text). Therefore, if you are wondering “what is a good closing sentence like?” – keep on reading.

What Does a Good Conclusion Mean?

Writing a good conclusion for a paper isn’t easy. However, we are going to walk you through this process step by step. Although there are generally no strict rules on how to formulate one, there are some basic principles that everyone should keep in mind. In this section, we will share some core ideas for writing a good conclusion, and, later in the article, we will also provide you with more practical advice and examples.

Here are the core goals a good conclusion should complete:

• “Wrap up” the entire paper;
• Demonstrate to readers that the author accomplished what he/she set out to do;
• Show how you the author has proved their thesis statement;
• Give a sense of completeness and closure on the topic;
• Leave something extra for your reader to think about;
• Leave a powerful final impact on a reader.

Another key thing to remember is that you should not introduce any new ideas or arguments to your paper's conclusion. It should only sum up what you have already written, revisit your thesis statement, and end with a powerful final impression.

When considering how to write a conclusion that works, here are the key points to keep in mind:

• A concluding sentence should only revisit the thesis statement, not restate it;
• It should summarize the main ideas from the body of the paper;
• It should demonstrate the significance and relevance of your work;
• An essay’s conclusion should include a call for action and leave space for further study or development of the topic (if necessary).

How Long Should a Conclusion Be? 

Although there are no strict universal rules regarding the length of an essay’s final clause, both teachers and experienced writers recommend keeping it clear, concise, and straight to the point. There is an unspoken rule that the introduction and conclusion of an academic paper should both be about 10% of the overall paper’s volume. For example, if you were assigned a 1500 word essay, both the introductory and final clauses should be approximately 150 words long (300 together).

Why You Need to Know How to End an Essay:

A conclusion is what drives a paper to its logical end. It also drives the main points of your piece one last time. It is your last opportunity to impact and impress your audience. And, most importantly, it is your chance to demonstrate to readers why your work matters. Simply put, the final paragraph of your essay should answer the last important question a reader will have – “So what?”

If you do a concluding paragraph right, it can give your readers a sense of logical completeness. On the other hand, if you do not make it powerful enough, it can leave them hanging, and diminish the effect of the entire piece.

Strategies to Crafting a Proper Conclusion

Although there are no strict rules for what style to use to write your conclusion, there are several strategies that have been proven to be effective. In the list below, you can find some of the most effective strategies with some good conclusion paragraph examples to help you grasp the idea.

One effective way to emphasize the significance of your essay and give the audience some thought to ponder about is by taking a look into the future. The “When and If” technique is quite powerful when it comes to supporting your points in the essay’s conclusion.

Prediction essay conclusion example: “Taking care of a pet is quite hard, which is the reason why most parents refuse their children’s requests to get a pet. However, the refusal should be the last choice of parents. If we want to inculcate a deep sense of responsibility and organization in our kids, and, at the same time, sprout compassion in them, we must let our children take care of pets.”

Another effective strategy is to link your conclusion to your introductory paragraph. This will create a full-circle narration for your readers, create a better understanding of your topic, and emphasize your key point.

Echo conclusion paragraph example: Introduction: “I believe that all children should grow up with a pet. I still remember the exact day my parents brought my first puppy to our house. This was one of the happiest moments in my life and, at the same time, one of the most life-changing ones. Growing up with a pet taught me a lot, and most importantly, it taught me to be responsible.” Conclusion:. “I remember when I picked up my first puppy and how happy I was at that time. Growing up with a pet, I learned what it means to take care of someone, make sure that he always has water and food, teach him, and constantly keep an eye on my little companion. Having a child grow up with a pet teaches them responsibility and helps them acquire a variety of other life skills like leadership, love, compassion, and empathy. This is why I believe that every kid should grow up with a pet!”

Finally, one more trick that will help you create a flawless conclusion is to amplify your main idea or to present it in another perspective of a larger context. This technique will help your readers to look at the problem discussed from a different angle.

Step-up argumentative essay conclusion example: “Despite the obvious advantages of owning a pet in childhood, I feel that we cannot generalize whether all children should have a pet. Whereas some kids may benefit from such experiences, namely, by becoming more compassionate, organized, and responsible, it really depends on the situation, motivation, and enthusiasm of a particular child for owning a pet.”

What is a clincher in an essay? – The final part of an essay’s conclusion is often referred to as a clincher sentence. According to the clincher definition, it is a final sentence that reinforces the main idea or leaves the audience with an intriguing thought to ponder upon. In a nutshell, the clincher is very similar to the hook you would use in an introductory paragraph. Its core mission is to seize the audience’s attention until the end of the paper. At the same time, this statement is what creates a sense of completeness and helps the author leave a lasting impression on the reader.

Now, since you now know what a clincher is, you are probably wondering how to use one in your own paper. First of all, keep in mind that a good clincher should be intriguing, memorable, smooth, and straightforward.

Generally, there are several different tricks you can use for your clincher statement; it can be:

• A short, but memorable and attention-grabbing conclusion;
• A relevant and memorable quote (only if it brings actual value);
• A call to action;
• A rhetorical question;
• An illustrative story or provocative example;
• A warning against a possibility or suggestion about the consequences of a discussed problem;
• A joke (however, be careful with this as it may not always be deemed appropriate).

Regardless of the technique you choose, make sure that your clincher is memorable and aligns with your introduction and thesis.

Clincher examples: - While New York may not be the only place with the breathtaking views, it is definitely among my personal to 3… and that’s what definitely makes it worth visiting. - “Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars”, Divine Comedy - Don’t you think all these advantages sound like almost life-saving benefits of owning a pet? “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”, The Great Gatsby

Conclusion Writing Don'ts 

Now, when you know what tricks and techniques you should use to create a perfect conclusion, let’s look at some of the things you should not do with our online paper writing service :

• Starting with some cliché concluding sentence starters. Many students find common phrases like “In conclusion,” “Therefore,” “In summary,” or similar statements to be pretty good conclusion starters. However, though such conclusion sentence starters may work in certain cases – for example, in speeches – they are overused, so it is recommended not to use them in writing to introduce your conclusion.
• Putting the first mention of your thesis statement in the conclusion – it has to be presented in your introduction first.
• Providing new arguments, subtopics, or ideas in the conclusion paragraph.
• Including a slightly changed or unchanged thesis statement.
• Providing arguments and evidence that belong in the body of the work.
• Writing too long, hard to read, or confusing sentences.

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Conclusion Paragraph Outline

The total number of sentences in your final paragraph may vary depending on the number of points you discussed in your essay, as well as on the overall word count of your paper. However, the overall conclusion paragraph outline will remain the same and consists of the following elements:

• A conclusion starter:

The first part of your paragraph should drive readers back to your thesis statement. Thus, if you were wondering how to start a conclusion, the best way to do it is by rephrasing your thesis statement.

• Summary of the body paragraphs:

Right after revisiting your thesis, you should include several sentences that wrap up the key highlights and points from your body paragraphs. This part of your conclusion can consist of 2-3 sentences—depending on the number of arguments you’ve made. If necessary, you can also explain to the readers how your main points fit together.

• A concluding sentence:

Finally, you should end your paragraph with a last, powerful sentence that leaves a lasting impression, gives a sense of logical completeness, and connects readers back to the introduction of the paper.

These three key elements make up a perfect essay conclusion. Now, to give you an even better idea of how to create a perfect conclusion, let us give you a sample conclusion paragraph outline with examples from an argumentative essay on the topic of “Every Child Should Own a Pet:

• Sentence 1: Starter
• ~ Thesis: "Though taking care of a pet may be a bit challenging for small children. Parents should not restrict their kids from having a pet as it helps them grow into more responsible and compassionate people."
• ~ Restated thesis for a conclusion: "I can say that taking care of a pet is good for every child."
• Sentences 2-4: Summary
• ~ "Studies have shown that pet owners generally have fewer health problems."
• ~ "Owning a pet teaches a child to be more responsible."
• ~ "Spending time with a pet reduces stress, feelings of loneliness, and anxiety."
• Sentence 5: A concluding sentence
• ~ "Pets can really change a child life for the better, so don't hesitate to endorse your kid's desire to own a pet."

This is a clear example of how you can shape your conclusion paragraph.

How to Conclude Various Types of Essays

Depending on the type of academic essay you are working on, your concluding paragraph's style, tone, and length may vary. In this part of our guide, we will tell you how to end different types of essays and other works.

How to End an Argumentative Essay

Persuasive or argumentative essays always have the single goal of convincing readers of something (an idea, stance, or viewpoint) by appealing to arguments, facts, logic, and even emotions. The conclusion for such an essay has to be persuasive as well. A good trick you can use is to illustrate a real-life scenario that proves your stance or encourages readers to take action. More about persuasive essay outline you can read in our article.

Here are a few more tips for making a perfect conclusion for an argumentative essay:

• Carefully read the whole essay before you begin;
• Re-emphasize your ideas;
• Discuss possible implications;
• Don’t be afraid to appeal to the reader’s emotions.

How to End a Compare and Contrast Essay

The purpose of a compare and contrast essay is to emphasize the differences or similarities between two or more objects, people, phenomena, etc. Therefore, a logical conclusion should highlight how the reviewed objects are different or similar. Basically, in such a paper, your conclusion should recall all of the key common and distinctive features discussed in the body of your essay and also give readers some food for thought after they finish reading it.

How to Conclude a Descriptive Essay

The key idea of a descriptive essay is to showcase your creativity and writing skills by painting a vivid picture with the help of words. This is one of the most creative types of essays as it requires you to show a story, not tell it. This kind of essay implies using a lot of vivid details. Respectively, the conclusion of such a paper should also use descriptive imagery and, at the same time, sum up the main ideas. A good strategy for ending a descriptive essay would be to begin with a short explanation of why you wrote the essay. Then, you should reflect on how your topic affects you. In the middle of the conclusion, you should cover the most critical moments of the story to smoothly lead the reader into a logical closing statement. The “clincher”, in this case, should be a thought-provoking final sentence that leaves a good and lasting impression on the audience. Do not lead the reader into the essay and then leave them with dwindling memories of it.

How to Conclude an Essay About Yourself

If you find yourself writing an essay about yourself, you need to tell a personal story. As a rule, such essays talk about the author’s experiences, which is why a conclusion should create a feeling of narrative closure. A good strategy is to end your story with a logical finale and the lessons you have learned, while, at the same time, linking it to the introductory paragraph and recalling key moments from the story.

How to End an Informative Essay

Unlike other types of papers, informative or expository essays load readers with a lot of information and facts. In this case, “Synthesize, don’t summarize” is the best technique you can use to end your paper. Simply put, instead of recalling all of the major facts, you should approach your conclusion from the “So what?” position by highlighting the significance of the information provided.

How to Conclude a Narrative Essay

In a nutshell, a narrative essay is based on simple storytelling. The purpose of this paper is to share a particular story in detail. Therefore, the conclusion for such a paper should wrap up the story and avoid finishing on an abrupt cliffhanger. It is vital to include the key takeaways and the lessons learned from the story.

How to Write a Conclusion for a Lab Report

Unlike an essay, a lab report is based on an experiment. This type of paper describes the flow of a particular experiment conducted by a student and its conclusion should reflect on the outcomes of this experiment.

In thinking of how to write a conclusion for a lab, here are the key things you should do to get it right:

• Restate the goals of your experiment
• Describe the methods you used
• Include the results of the experiment and analyze the final data
• End your conclusion with a clear statement on whether or not the experiment was successful (Did you reach the expected results?)

How to Write a Conclusion for a Research Paper

Writing a paper is probably the hardest task of all, even for experienced dissertation writer . Unlike an essay or even a lab report, a research paper is a much longer piece of work that requires a deeper investigation of the problem. Therefore, a conclusion for such a paper should be even more sophisticated and powerful. If you're feeling difficulty writing an essay, you can buy essay on our service.

However, given that a research paper is the second most popular kind of academic paper (after an essay), it is important to know how to conclude a research paper. Even if you have not yet been assigned to do this task, be sure that you will face it soon. So, here are the steps you should follow to create a great conclusion for a research paper:

• Restate the Topic

Start your final paragraph with a quick reminder of what the topic of the piece is about. Keep it one sentence long.

• Revisit the Thesis

Next, you should remind your readers what your thesis statement was. However, do not just copy and paste it from the introductory clause: paraphrase your thesis so that you deliver the same idea but with different words. Keep your paraphrased thesis narrow, specific, and topic-oriented.

• Summarise Your Key Ideas

Just like the case of a regular essay’s conclusion, a research paper’s final paragraph should also include a short summary of all of the key points stated in the body sections. We recommend reading the entire body part a few times to define all of your main arguments and ideas.

• Showcase the Significance of Your Work

In the research paper conclusion, it is vital to highlight the significance of your research problem and state how your solution could be helpful.

• Make Suggestions for Future Studies

Finally, at the end of your conclusion, you should define how your findings will contribute to the development of its particular field of science. Outline the perspectives of further research and, if necessary, explain what is yet to be discovered on the topic.

Then, end your conclusion with a powerful concluding sentence – it can be a rhetorical question, call to action, or another hook that will help you have a strong impact on the audience.

• Answer the Right Questions

To create a top-notch research paper conclusion, be sure to answer the following questions:

• What is the goal of a research paper?
• What are the possible solutions to the research question(s)?
• How can your results be implemented in real life? (Is your research paper helpful to the community?)
• Why is this study important and relevant?

Additionally, here are a few more handy tips to follow:

• Provide clear examples from real life to help readers better understand the further implementation of the stated solutions;
• Keep your conclusion fresh, original, and creative.

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So, What Is a Good Closing Sentence? See The Difference

One of the best ways to learn how to write a good conclusion is to look at several professional essay conclusion examples. In this section of our guide, we are going to look at two different final paragraphs shaped on the basis of the same template, but even so, they are very different – where one is weak and the other is strong. Below, we are going to compare them to help you understand the difference between a good and a bad conclusion.

Here is the template we used: College degrees are in decline. The price of receiving an education does not correlate with the quality of the education received. As a result, graduated students face underemployment, and the worth of college degrees appears to be in serious doubt. However, the potential social and economic benefits of educated students balance out the equation.

Strong Conclusion ‍

People either see college as an opportunity or an inconvenience; therefore, a degree can only hold as much value as its owner’s skillset. The underemployment of graduate students puts the worth of college degrees in serious doubt. Yet, with the multitude of benefits that educated students bring to society and the economy, the equation remains in balance. Perhaps the ordinary person should consider college as a wise financial investment, but only if they stay determined to study and do the hard work.

Why is this example good? There are several key points that prove its effectiveness:

• There is a bold opening statement that encompasses the two contrasting types of students we can see today.
• There are two sentences that recall the thesis statement and cover the key arguments from the body of the essay.
• Finally, the last sentence sums up the key message of the essay and leaves readers with something to think about.

Weak Conclusion

In conclusion, with the poor preparation of students in college and the subsequent underemployment after graduation from college, the worth associated with the college degree appears to be in serious doubt. However, these issues alone may not reasonably conclude beyond a doubt that investing in a college degree is a rewarding venture. When the full benefits that come with education are carefully put into consideration and evaluated, college education for children in any country still has good advantages, and society should continue to advocate for a college education. The ordinary person should consider this a wise financial decision that holds rewards in the end. Apart from the monetary gains associated with a college education, society will greatly benefit from students when they finish college. Their minds are going to be expanded, and their reasoning and decision making will be enhanced.

What makes this example bad? Here are a few points to consider:

• Unlike the first example, this paragraph is long and not specific enough. The author provides plenty of generalized phrases that are not backed up by actual arguments.
• This piece is hard to read and understand and sentences have a confusing structure. Also, there are lots of repetitions and too many uses of the word “college”.
• There is no summary of the key benefits.
• The last two sentences that highlight the value of education contradict with the initial statement.
• Finally, the last sentence doesn’t offer a strong conclusion and gives no thought to ponder upon.
• In the body of your essay, you have hopefully already provided your reader(s) with plenty of information. Therefore, it is not wise to present new arguments or ideas in your conclusion.
• To end your final paragraph right, find a clear and straightforward message that will have the most powerful impact on your audience.
• Don’t use more than one quote in the final clause of your paper – the information from external sources (including quotes) belongs in the body of a paper.
• Be authoritative when writing a conclusion. You should sound confident and convincing to leave a good impression. Sentences like “I’m not an expert, but…” will most likely make you seem less knowledgeable and/or credible.

Good Conclusion Examples

Now that we've learned what a conclusion is and how to write one let's take a look at some essay conclusion examples to strengthen our knowledge.

The ending ironically reveals that all was for nothing. (A short explanation of the thematic effect of the book’s end) Tom says that Miss Watson freed Jim in her final will.Jim told Huck that the dead man on the Island was pap. The entire adventure seemingly evaporated into nothingness. (How this effect was manifested into the minds of thereaders).

All in all, international schools hold the key to building a full future that students can achieve. (Thesis statement simplified) They help students develop their own character by learning from their mistakes, without having to face a dreadful penalty for failure. (Thesis statement elaborated)Although some say that kids emerged “spoiled” with this mentality, the results prove the contrary. (Possible counter-arguments are noted)

In conclusion, public workers should be allowed to strike since it will give them a chance to air their grievances. (Thesis statement) Public workers should be allowed to strike when their rights, safety, and regulations are compromised. The workers will get motivated when they strike, and their demands are met.

In summary, studies reveal some similarities in the nutrient contents between the organic and non-organic food substances. (Starts with similarities) However, others have revealed many considerable differences in the amounts of antioxidants as well as other minerals present in organic and non-organic foods. Generally, organic foods have higher levels of antioxidants than non-organic foods and therefore are more important in the prevention of chronic illnesses.

As time went by, my obsession grew into something bigger than art; (‘As time went by’ signals maturation) it grew into a dream of developing myself for the world. (Showing student’s interest of developing himself for the community) It is a dream of not only seeing the world from a different perspective but also changing the perspective of people who see my work. (Showing student’s determination to create moving pieces of art)

In conclusion, it is evident that technology is an integral part of our lives and without it, we become “lost” since we have increasingly become dependent on its use. (Thesis with main point)

You might also be interested in reading nursing essay examples from our service.

How To Write A Conclusion For An Essay?

How to write a good conclusion, how to write a conclusion for a college essay.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

Related Articles

Transitions

What this handout is about.

In this crazy, mixed-up world of ours, transitions glue our ideas and our essays together. This handout will introduce you to some useful transitional expressions and help you employ them effectively.

The function and importance of transitions

In both academic writing and professional writing, your goal is to convey information clearly and concisely, if not to convert the reader to your way of thinking. Transitions help you to achieve these goals by establishing logical connections between sentences, paragraphs, and sections of your papers. In other words, transitions tell readers what to do with the information you present to them. Whether single words, quick phrases, or full sentences, they function as signs that tell readers how to think about, organize, and react to old and new ideas as they read through what you have written.

Transitions signal relationships between ideas—relationships such as: “Another example coming up—stay alert!” or “Here’s an exception to my previous statement” or “Although this idea appears to be true, here’s the real story.” Basically, transitions provide the reader with directions for how to piece together your ideas into a logically coherent argument. Transitions are not just verbal decorations that embellish your paper by making it sound or read better. They are words with particular meanings that tell the reader to think and react in a particular way to your ideas. In providing the reader with these important cues, transitions help readers understand the logic of how your ideas fit together.

Signs that you might need to work on your transitions

How can you tell whether you need to work on your transitions? Here are some possible clues:

• Your instructor has written comments like “choppy,” “jumpy,” “abrupt,” “flow,” “need signposts,” or “how is this related?” on your papers.
• Your readers (instructors, friends, or classmates) tell you that they had trouble following your organization or train of thought.
• You tend to write the way you think—and your brain often jumps from one idea to another pretty quickly.
• You wrote your paper in several discrete “chunks” and then pasted them together.
• You are working on a group paper; the draft you are working on was created by pasting pieces of several people’s writing together.

Organization

Since the clarity and effectiveness of your transitions will depend greatly on how well you have organized your paper, you may want to evaluate your paper’s organization before you work on transitions. In the margins of your draft, summarize in a word or short phrase what each paragraph is about or how it fits into your analysis as a whole. This exercise should help you to see the order of and connection between your ideas more clearly.

If after doing this exercise you find that you still have difficulty linking your ideas together in a coherent fashion, your problem may not be with transitions but with organization. For help in this area (and a more thorough explanation of the “reverse outlining” technique described in the previous paragraph), please see the Writing Center’s handout on organization .

How transitions work

The organization of your written work includes two elements: (1) the order in which you have chosen to present the different parts of your discussion or argument, and (2) the relationships you construct between these parts. Transitions cannot substitute for good organization, but they can make your organization clearer and easier to follow. Take a look at the following example:

El Pais , a Latin American country, has a new democratic government after having been a dictatorship for many years. Assume that you want to argue that El Pais is not as democratic as the conventional view would have us believe.

One way to effectively organize your argument would be to present the conventional view and then to provide the reader with your critical response to this view. So, in Paragraph A you would enumerate all the reasons that someone might consider El Pais highly democratic, while in Paragraph B you would refute these points. The transition that would establish the logical connection between these two key elements of your argument would indicate to the reader that the information in paragraph B contradicts the information in paragraph A. As a result, you might organize your argument, including the transition that links paragraph A with paragraph B, in the following manner:

Paragraph A: points that support the view that El Pais’s new government is very democratic.

Transition: Despite the previous arguments, there are many reasons to think that El Pais’s new government is not as democratic as typically believed.

Paragraph B: points that contradict the view that El Pais’s new government is very democratic.

In this case, the transition words “Despite the previous arguments,” suggest that the reader should not believe paragraph A and instead should consider the writer’s reasons for viewing El Pais’s democracy as suspect.

As the example suggests, transitions can help reinforce the underlying logic of your paper’s organization by providing the reader with essential information regarding the relationship between your ideas. In this way, transitions act as the glue that binds the components of your argument or discussion into a unified, coherent, and persuasive whole.

Types of transitions

Now that you have a general idea of how to go about developing effective transitions in your writing, let us briefly discuss the types of transitions your writing will use.

The types of transitions available to you are as diverse as the circumstances in which you need to use them. A transition can be a single word, a phrase, a sentence, or an entire paragraph. In each case, it functions the same way: First, the transition either directly summarizes the content of a preceding sentence, paragraph, or section or implies such a summary (by reminding the reader of what has come before). Then, it helps the reader anticipate or comprehend the new information that you wish to present.

• Transitions between sections: Particularly in longer works, it may be necessary to include transitional paragraphs that summarize for the reader the information just covered and specify the relevance of this information to the discussion in the following section.
• Transitions between paragraphs: If you have done a good job of arranging paragraphs so that the content of one leads logically to the next, the transition will highlight a relationship that already exists by summarizing the previous paragraph and suggesting something of the content of the paragraph that follows. A transition between paragraphs can be a word or two (however, for example, similarly), a phrase, or a sentence. Transitions can be at the end of the first paragraph, at the beginning of the second paragraph, or in both places.
• Transitions within paragraphs: As with transitions between sections and paragraphs, transitions within paragraphs act as cues by helping readers to anticipate what is coming before they read it. Within paragraphs, transitions tend to be single words or short phrases.

Transitional expressions

Effectively constructing each transition often depends upon your ability to identify words or phrases that will indicate for the reader the kind of logical relationships you want to convey. The table below should make it easier for you to find these words or phrases. Whenever you have trouble finding a word, phrase, or sentence to serve as an effective transition, refer to the information in the table for assistance. Look in the left column of the table for the kind of logical relationship you are trying to express. Then look in the right column of the table for examples of words or phrases that express this logical relationship.

Keep in mind that each of these words or phrases may have a slightly different meaning. Consult a dictionary or writer’s handbook if you are unsure of the exact meaning of a word or phrase.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write a Research Paper 

• Smodin Editorial Team
• Updated: May 17, 2024

Most students hate writing research papers. The process can often feel long, tedious, and sometimes outright boring. Nevertheless, these assignments are vital to a student’s academic journey. Want to learn how to write a research paper that captures the depth of the subject and maintains the reader’s interest? If so, this guide is for you.

Today, we’ll show you how to assemble a well-organized research paper to help you make the grade. You can transform any topic into a compelling research paper with a thoughtful approach to your research and a persuasive argument.

In this guide, we’ll provide seven simple but practical tips to help demystify the process and guide you on your way. We’ll also explain how AI tools can expedite the research and writing process so you can focus on critical thinking.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a clear roadmap for tackling these essays. You will also learn how to tackle them quickly and efficiently. With time and dedication, you’ll soon master the art of research paper writing.

Ready to get started?

What Is a Research Paper?

A research paper is a comprehensive essay that gives a detailed analysis, interpretation, or argument based on your own independent research. In higher-level academic settings, it goes beyond a simple summarization and includes a deep inquiry into the topic or topics.

The term “research paper” is a broad term that can be applied to many different forms of academic writing. The goal is to combine your thoughts with the findings from peer-reviewed scholarly literature.

By the time your essay is done, you should have provided your reader with a new perspective or challenged existing findings. This demonstrates your mastery of the subject and contributes to ongoing scholarly debates.

7 Tips for Writing a Research Paper

Often, getting started is the most challenging part of a research paper. While the process can seem daunting, breaking it down into manageable steps can make it easier to manage. The following are seven tips for getting your ideas out of your head and onto the page.

1. Understand Your Assignment

It may sound simple, but the first step in writing a successful research paper is to read the assignment. Sit down, take a few moments of your time, and go through the instructions so you fully understand your assignment.

Misinterpreting the assignment can not only lead to a significant waste of time but also affect your grade. No matter how patient your teacher or professor may be, ignoring basic instructions is often inexcusable.

If you read the instructions and are still confused, ask for clarification before you start writing. If that’s impossible, you can use tools like Smodin’s AI chat to help. Smodin can help highlight critical requirements that you may overlook.

This initial investment ensures that all your future efforts will be focused and efficient. Remember, thinking is just as important as actually writing the essay, and it can also pave the wave for a smoother writing process.

2. Gather Research Materials

Now comes the fun part: doing the research. As you gather research materials, always use credible sources, such as academic journals or peer-reviewed papers. Only use search engines that filter for accredited sources and academic databases so you can ensure your information is reliable.

To optimize your time, you must learn to master the art of skimming. If a source seems relevant and valuable, save it and review it later. The last thing you want to do is waste time on material that won’t make it into the final paper.

To speed up the process even more, consider using Smodin’s AI summarizer . This tool can help summarize large texts, highlighting key information relevant to your topic. By systematically gathering and filing research materials early in the writing process, you build a strong foundation for your thesis.

3. Write Your Thesis

Creating a solid thesis statement is the most important thing you can do to bring structure and focus to your research paper. Your thesis should express the main point of your argument in one or two simple sentences. Remember, when you create your thesis, you’re setting the tone and direction for the entire paper.

Of course, you can’t just pull a winning thesis out of thin air. Start by brainstorming potential thesis ideas based on your preliminary research. And don’t overthink things; sometimes, the most straightforward ideas are often the best.

You want a thesis that is specific enough to be manageable within the scope of your paper but broad enough to allow for a unique discussion. Your thesis should challenge existing expectations and provide the reader with fresh insight into the topic. Use your thesis to hook the reader in the opening paragraph and keep them engaged until the very last word.

4. Write Your Outline

An outline is an often overlooked but essential tool for organizing your thoughts and structuring your paper. Many students skip the outline because it feels like doing double work, but a strong outline will save you work in the long run.

Here’s how to effectively structure your outline.

• Introduction: List your thesis statement and outline the main questions your essay will answer.
• Literature Review: Outline the key literature you plan to discuss and explain how it will relate to your thesis.
• Methodology: Explain the research methods you will use to gather and analyze the information.
• Discussion: Plan how you will interpret the results and their implications for your thesis.
• Conclusion: Summarize the content above to elucidate your thesis fully.

To further streamline this process, consider using Smodin’s Research Writer. This tool offers a feature that allows you to generate and tweak an outline to your liking based on the initial input you provide. You can adjust this outline to fit your research findings better and ensure that your paper remains well-organized and focused.

5. Write a Rough Draft

Once your outline is in place, you can begin the writing process. Remember, when you write a rough draft, it isn’t meant to be perfect. Instead, use it as a working document where you can experiment with and rearrange your arguments and evidence.

Don’t worry too much about grammar, style, or syntax as you write your rough draft. Focus on getting your ideas down on paper and flush out your thesis arguments. You can always refine and rearrange the content the next time around.

Follow the basic structure of your outline but with the freedom to explore different ways of expressing your thoughts. Smodin’s Essay Writer offers a powerful solution for those struggling with starting or structuring their drafts.

After you approve the outline, Smodin can generate an essay based on your initial inputs. This feature can help you quickly create a comprehensive draft, which you can then review and refine. You can even use the power of AI to create multiple rough drafts from which to choose.

6. Add or Subtract Supporting Evidence

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Watching the Protests From Israel

The israeli writer ari shavit discusses the tensions between the demands of campus activists and how israelis see the war..

[MUSIC PLAYING]

From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

I’ve been watching, as I imagine so many of you have, as the campus protests over Israel over what’s happening in Gaza have exploded across the news.

Clashes and arrests at colleges across the country. Demonstrations are now coming to a head.

Tonight, at University of Texas, Austin, police, one by one, detaining pro-Palestinian protesters.

In Oregon at Portland State University—

Atlanta’s Emory University—

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill—

The Fordham University’s Manhattan campus—

Texas State University and the University of Washington—

And on Long Island, students and police clashed at a protest at Stony Brook University today. An encampment was set up—

I’ve been watching police go in and clear encampments in the place I went to college at UCLA.

I’m here in New York. What is happening at Columbia has been all over the news.

More than 100 people were arrested after the school asked police to remove student protesters.

And I found it hard myself to know what to think. One reason is that protests of this size are never one thing. On the one hand, you really do hear at them people just shouting antisemitic poison.

Go back to Poland!

And on the other hand, you can go to one of them and attend a beautiful Passover seder inside the Columbian encampment.

[SINGING IN HEBREW]

And trying to think about what to make of it, whether this is a thing to cover, whether it is a distraction from the thing to cover, and I think the place I came to is that I wanted to keep an eye on power here. Who has the power to change the reality in Israel and in Gaza right now? I think there’s an implicit default in people’s thinking to some deus ex machina, some outside player, maybe America or the U.N., who can come impose some new reality.

That’s not how this works, though. Really, it’s Israel and it’s Hamas. Hamas could release the hostages. Israel could end its war or change its policies. And I think if you are listening to the protesters, the students, the idea that they really have is they’re going to influence Israel.

They want their universities to divest from Israel. They’re using media coverage to try to push Joe Biden to change his policies towards Israel. But what that means, then, is that the effectiveness of these protests in the end relies on some engagement, some sense of Israeli politics and culture.

And so I wondered, how are these campus protests being received in Israel? What are Israelis seeing? What do they make of it? When I think about Israel, I always think about this book written in 2013 by Ari Shavit, who’s a longtime political reporter there, called “My Promised Land.”

And I recommend this book to everybody. I think it is the single best book on what Israel is because it is a book that is better able than any other to hold both the idealism and violence at its heart, to take seriously both the way it was a miracle for some and a tragedy for others, to make you feel the work that went into it— this was not just given to the Israelis— and on the other hand, the dispossession that was required by it.

It’s a book that does something that not that much on this subject does, which is hold contradiction without trying to resolve it. And so I wanted to talk to Shavit, as somebody who understands Israel very deeply, about the protest movement, about the increasing tensions with Jews in the diaspora and Jews in Israel, and about Israeli politics itself, and where it goes from here, and what happens if it actually doesn’t really go anywhere from here. As always, my email, [email protected].

Ari Shavit, welcome to the show.

So good to be with you. Thank you.

So when you look at the campus protests sweeping America about Israel, what do you see?

I am deeply saddened. I’ll tell you what I don’t see. I don’t see Gandhi-like marches. I don’t see Martin Luther King kind of demonstrations. I don’t see an understanding of the profound tragedy that we are trapped in.

So if people were there marching, talking about the hostages, and talking about the 1,200 people who were slaughtered on Oct. 7, then I would deeply, deeply respect their anger, but when you see that it’s all one-sided, and when you see that it goes from legitimate criticism of Israel to a kind of obsession with hating it, then I wonder. It makes me — beyond the sadness, it scares me.

I think there is justified criticism. There is understandable criticism. And then there is vicious criticism bordering on anti-Semitism. When America was in Vietnam, there were justified anti-war marches all over. They never doubted the legitimacy of America, of the United States of America. When France was in Algeria, in Indochina, there was criticism of the entire global left. No one said that the French Republic is illegitimate.

In a way, I’m glad you brought up the Vietnam marches because I think the thing you just said there is flatly wrong. The Vietnam marches, which were right in their moral direction, were full of people who questioned the fundamental legitimacy of America, full of people who were calling for victory over and the deaths of our soldiers, full of people who did not march with love, who were not Gandhi, who were not Martin Luther King Jr. Of course, they also had marches where there literally was Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the difficult things about reading a mass protest movement is that it is never one thing. It is never, or very rarely, perfectly on message, perfectly respectable, perfectly managed. If it were, it often would not get very much coverage. And so let me agree with you that there are things at these marches that are repugnant.

And I, frankly, have very little patience myself for the way this conversation ends up endlessly circling this question of, does Israel have the right to exist? Israel exists, but many of the people at these marches do not hate Israel for being Israel. They certainly do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish. These Jewish students, as I understand them— and I’ve spoken to some of them— they feel they have to choose between their political values and any kind of solidarity with the state of Israel. What do you say to them?

I would ask them, and ask even you, to make a distinction between the Israeli government, between the Israeli prime minister, and between the Israeli people and the Israeli project. I am as angry at Prime Minister Netanyahu as you are or as the young demonstrators are because Mr. Netanyahu is endangering the lives of my children.

I’m angry at the Israeli extreme right, just as you are or the young demonstrators are, because they are tainting and threatening the dream that my grand-grandparents dreamt and my grandparents and parents fulfilled in the most miraculous way.

But there is a distinction between that and the Israeli project, the Israeli state, because at the end, look, when I listened to some of this discourse, people are talking that Israel is a colonizing nation. We have been the ultimate other of white Europe for 1,500 years. We never knew where we’ll sleep next year. We will never know what will happen to us. And then we became white Europe’s ultimate victim.

So we ran away from white Europe. We were not sent by white Europe. How can you totally attack the right of a homeless people to have a home? We are not part of imperialism. We are a small persecuted people that somehow saved itself at the last moment.

And in order to prevent the death of a people, they transferred them from one continent and several continents. They revived the language. They built a society, created a state, a nation. It’s an incredible, incredible human endeavor. You don’t have to be Jewish or pro-Israeli to see that.

And when I look around, where are we compared to Australia, Canada, New Zealand — or you folks? When I see that distortion, I find it difficult to deal with, difficult, because the distortion is so extreme.

So, true— and I wrote about it, and I’m willing to talk about it— we have sinned. We made mistakes. We are in a tragedy. But to totally overlook the justice at the heart of this project and to just see the flaws and the problems, I find that a distortion.

It was interesting to me that you kept coming back to the word “distortion” here, because the word you used in your book is “contradiction.” I was looking at my notes from “My Promised Land.” I have— and you should take this as a compliment— 188 highlights in that book. It’s a lot of highlights.

Thank you very much.

I want to read you one of them, and I want to hear how it sounds to you right now. You write, “Zionism skated on thin ice. On the one hand, it was a national liberation movement, but on the other, it was a colonialist enterprise. It intended to save the lives of one people by the dispossession of another. In its first 50 years, Zionism was aware of this complexity and acted accordingly.

It was very careful not to be associated with colonialism and tried not to cause unnecessary hardship. It made sure it was a democratic, progressive, and enlightened movement, collaborating with the world’s forces of progress. With great sophistication, Zionism handled the contradiction at its core.”

I’m curious how that paragraph that you wrote sounds to you now because the thing that people are picking up on, what you’re calling the distortion, is they’re seeing one side of it has now taken over. And maybe they’re right.

It’s a wonderful question. When my great-grandparents came to Palestine, to Eretz Yisrael, they understood that we have to make it clear to ourselves and to others that we are not another colonial project, that we are not like others. And they understood that while they have a particular mission, saving the Jewish people from death, not just oppression, they have a universal mission.

The idea of the kibbutz, for example, was this combination, that on the one hand, you want to settle the land. You want to build a national project, but simultaneously, you want to contribute to the world. You have a message. By the way, that’s my understanding of Judaism. It’s not just about national entity and national existence and definitely not about power. You need the inspirational part. You need the moral dimension.

David Ben-Gurion and these people understood that. Now, we had the right to try to throw a nuclear bomb over Germany. We did exactly opposite. We signed agreements with Germany in 1952 to help us build the country. They were so much into this balance that we experienced what we experienced, but we will build. Our revenge will be to live, to bring children, to bring life. We came to death, we are surrounded by death, but we choose life. That’s the Israel I love and admire.

Sadly, decades later, we surrendered to the victimhood ethos, and we used the Holocaust, which is a horrible event, and we became more and more— we lost that balance of fighting for ourselves while seeing the others. And then we find ourselves in a place where extreme right-wing Israelis help extreme left people in America lead us all into this kind of distortion.

There is a separation that gets made there in your answer, but here, constantly, when I heard Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s speech about Israel, he was making the separation between the government and the people.

And I wonder about this, because Netanyahu has won again and again and again and again. If you are 18 and you are in college right now, he has been prime minister of Israel for almost your entire life, the vast majority of it. He has been chosen. His coalitions have been chosen. The movement right has been chosen.

And so I wonder whether there is this separation. Because when I even think of Donald Trump, he represents something. He did not just take over in a hostile boardroom maneuver. He appealed to people, and they wanted him, and they want him again, many of them.

And there is something in Netanyahu that is wanted. Now, maybe he is seen as incompetent. Maybe he is seen as a failure. But it is not clear that what has turned Israelis against him is the right-wing project so much and the callousness of it, so much as the fact that he did a terrible job managing security. Defend this cut to me.

So let’s make a distinction here, if I may, between previous years and Oct. 7 and afterwards. So if you look at the last few years or the Netanyahu decade, what you’ve seen is a terrible failure of the center left— and by the way, of the international community as well.

Because basically what happened, we asked our people— I as an active in the peace movement at the time, we asked our people to accept the two-state solution idea, the peace idea. Time after time, they voted for it. They voted for Rabin. They voted for Barack. We went to the Camp David Peace Summit in 2000— it failed. We went to the Annapolis summit in 2007— it failed. We even had a process under President Barack and John Kerry in 2014, and it failed.

We never came back to our people, saying, true, the old peace process failed. We’ve learned from the mistakes, and therefore, we offer something new and realistic that addresses the harsh realities of the Middle East. I’ll say here in brackets, my life has been— my public life— has been about the struggle between liberal and moral values and the brutality of the historic reality I live in.

So the center-left and the international community have not delivered anything to deal with the legitimate fears and concerns of Israelis, who tried the two-state solution so many times, and it failed. It caused terrible suffering for the Palestinians, it caused terrible suffering for Israelis. And then comes Netanyahu and uses these fears. So historically, in a sense, I would say, Netanyahu is not only the sin, he’s the punishment, for the failure of the center-left to bring a realistic vision.

Israelis have not become evil and crazy and racist. We have that minority in us, but it’s not the majority. The main problem is fear that was not addressed and the failure of the old peace process.

Now let’s talk about after Oct. 7. I want you to understand— and I think it’s so important— Israelis are seeing a different war than the one that Americans see. You see one war film, horror film, and we see, at home, another war film, horror film. Israelis are stuck in Oct. 7 while the world has forgot Oct. 7, nearly forgot Oct. 7.

So Israelis are totally traumatized, are totally traumatized. Each one of us knows someone who was murdered, who was kidnapped, who was terribly wounded. My wife sees terrorists coming into our garden, and it’s all over. We experienced real fear.

Now, it’s not just Jewish neurosis. It’s not just in our minds. I want to compare it to 9/11. What we experienced, number wise, it’s like 10 times or 15 times worse than 9/11. But it’s an ongoing 9/11. Imagine a 9/11 where, afterwards, Al Qaeda keeps 133— 250 at the beginning— hostages, a bit combined the Iran hostage crisis of ‘79 with Al Qaeda of 2001.

And think of the fact that the ongoing 9/11, you would have had Al Qaeda in Mexico and Iran in Canada. It’s a nightmare. It’s surreal. So if you want Israelis to replace Netanyahu, to move away from the extreme right, you have to address their fears and their legitimate fears. Once we address this, we can demand of Israelis to have much more empathy and generosity and really try peace in a new way, in a realistic way, to stop this terrible tragedy.

Let me say first that I agree with everything you just said about both the psychology and the geography of this. I often try to say to people who see it as obvious that Israel’s response has gone way too far, which I do believe, by the way, it has gone way too far, I do say, look, imagine that 9/11 was conducted by an Al Qaeda that ruled Canada and what we would have done in response. I said this over and over and over again in the podcast I did after 10/7— there is no country that would permit that kind of incursion and massacre and not respond with overwhelming force.

At the same time, I want to connect this back to what you were just saying about the peace process because one thing that I think Israelis completely disregard now is that in the background, long before 10/7, they had let themselves become the villains.

When you say that Israelis feel we tried peace, and it was not responded to, I think there’s a lot of truth to that. How much everybody tried, that there are contested narratives of these peace processes, that’s all true as well. But I do think that there were honest attempts to try to find some equilibrium that was not this. I would say that went until about 2008.

And then what happened— and I think this is the much more dominant narrative for people who have followed this and are younger here— is peace was abandoned, and the settlements kept getting built. And so it wasn’t just that the peace process failed, and then went into a state of dormancy— it was that the peace process failed, and then it was made more and more impossible year by year, that there was an active effort, the laying down of concrete, the paving of roads, the erection of buildings, to make it impossible to imagine that trade of land.

And so there’s both the genuine problem you are pointing to, the question of how can anyone in Israel feel safe if Hamas exists in Gaza, but there’s also this other question, which is, how can Israel be safe? How can it exist? How can people here support it if it allows itself to settle into this role as the occupier?

So first of all, the short answer is, if you want the Israelis to change— and I think they should— or we should— the first thing is not to hold maps of the entire land between the river and the sea, all Palestinian, and basically say that I and my daughter and my wife and my two sons have to leave and go back to Poland because this is right now what is said in campuses.

So if you want Israelis to take the risk again— and I think we must and I’ll get into that— the international community, led by America, has to hug and support democratic Israel. Beyond that, I agree. I wouldn’t use the word “villain” the way you use. But with everything else you said, I agree. So I wouldn’t say Israel is a villain, but obviously, there are Israeli villains. Just like there are American villains and European villains, there are Israeli villains.

I think it is too complex— I just want to say that I think this is a way too complex to say anybody is a villain. I’m saying that for many people, Israel came to appear the villain.

They were the stronger player.

Oh, well. The strong, we’ll get into the strong. So you know what? Let’s get to the stronger. First of all, talking of distortions, one of the great distortions here that it’s not only about Israel, is that you assume that the weak is just, and the strong is wrong.

That’s a profoundly morally flawed statement because if I’ll parachute to you into Europe of 1944 and early 1945, the Germans were very weak, and the Allies were bombing them in Dresden and other places. So if you follow that logic, that distorted logic, you’ll be pro-Nazi. So I ask everybody to get out of this. This is something that happened in our intellectual world in the last 20, 30 years. And it’s a distortion not only regarding Israel.

Point number two, Israel is not that strong. The flaw of Israel itself, they became arrogant and cocky. People did not understand how vulnerable Israel is. Regarding the Palestinians, we are stronger. But there is a larger context here. What is threatened now is the entire free world and world order. You have a Chinese, Russian, Iranian axis attacking everything we believe in, everything we believe in. We have to see the larger context. We cannot be blind.

Ezra, this is the most intimidating Jewish moment in our lifetime. It’s one of the most painful Palestinian moments in our lifetime. And it’s one of the most dangerous global moments in our lifetime. We have to wake up. This is a mega, mega, mega event. What happened on Oct. 7 was an attack on the Jewish state and the democratic state, on the Jewish people, and in many ways, on the postwar world order.

There is much, I think, that people outside Israel do not see clearly about Israel. There are things people inside Israel, I think, do not see clearly about Israel, and one of them is strength. And so one of the things that I see again and again is this effort to, then, create a much larger set of enemies to justify a deep and very understandable— I come from Jewish history, too— a deep and understandable feeling of vulnerability, of weakness, of always being on the precipice.

But I’m in America, and so what I understand, I think, better than Israelis do is what the American politics are at least right now. Iran was never going to be a threat to Israel in this war, because as soon as it began, America moved battleships into place to make very clear that if Iran joined, it would be annihilated.

When there was an attack that led to the killing of a major Iranian commander, Iran launched a drone strike that it understood— everybody understood— back and forth, this was well calibrated to be shot down. Israel did a calibrated response. Israel and Iran have been in a very calibrated series of just enough in a way to maintain their domestic politics on both sides.

The danger for Israel, which is much stronger than I think you give it credit for, in part because it is backed by the strongest military the world has ever known— it is using American bombs now. It is backed by American warships now.

And when you say that the world needs to hug Israel, it is true that protesters on college campuses are unfurling maps in which Israel does not exist. It is also true the actual president of the United States of America has wrapped Israel in a very, very, very tight hug. He has then been spat on again and again and again by Benjamin Netanyahu, which I think we probably share a view on how that’s gone.

But what would make Israel weak is the loss of that support. What would make Israel actually vulnerable is if the politics that is emerging now among young Americans becomes a dominant politics of America when they move into power, which is how things typically work.

There is this paradoxical way in which the insistence upon vulnerability and what vulnerability makes possible practical or necessary is, in the long run, it seems to me, the thing that could create real vulnerability, a sort of unwillingness to recognize how much support for Israel in the long run and the strength will depend on whether it is seen as a moral nation by the generation that is going to take power here, and that when they look at it, do not see that anymore and also do not see anybody trying to prove that to them.

So you’re preaching to the converted, but let me try to explain. First of all, let’s begin with President Biden because not enough Israelis express enough gratitude to the United States generally and specifically to President Biden.

So let me try to do my bit. I think that what President Biden did in the first three days, in the first three weeks, in the first three months of this war, was incredible. It was a heroic, realistic act of leadership, not in spite of his age, but because of his age, because he has the World War II at his background and he has the Cold War in his bones.

Now, I totally agree. And look, Ezra, I’ve been reading you. You’ve been reading me, I’ve been reading you. What you write about the three generations and their attitude to Israel is totally, totally true. I was speaking to some, in some lecture I gave in Cambridge, to some young students who were confused about Israel and the conflict.

And the older one among them came to me, and she said to me, Ari, listen, I had Rabin. I had the Oslo process. I had an Israel I could identify with and look up to. What the younger Jewish kids in the diaspora have been experiencing in the last 20 years that they are asked to defend a nation with whose values they cannot identify.

I’m not one who’s using the external threats, the Chinese, Russian and Iranian dimension, in order to run away from the Palestinian issue, not at all. Israel has to deal in a much more courageous and generous way with the Palestinian issue. And Israel is guilty of the fact that in the last 15 years, we ignored it, and it became like the elephant in the room. And then we saw what happened.

But while our commitment, our responsibility, our mission is to deal with the Palestinian issue, you have to remember that Israel is not France, not America, and not China. Israel is a small, intimidated nation. So I ask all people of good faith and decency to look at the larger picture. I’m not asking it as an excuse to ignore the Palestinian issue, in no way.

There’s this language you hear that you’re using— I’m certain I’ve used it. It’s not a criticism of the Palestinian issue. But I want to make this more direct. Palestinians, right? I mean, we talk about a battle for Israel’s soul, but the battle happening right now is in Gaza. The question right now is whether or not Israel will enter Rafah.

And one of the things that makes it hard to support what Israel is doing for me, is, I don’t believe the war aims. If you could prove to me that if you went into Rafah, this place where more than half of Gazans are now huddled, you would somehow, with the same intelligence community that could not predict 10/7, figure out exactly who is a Hamas fighter and who is a Hamas commander, and remove them, kill them, imprison them, whatever it is. And as such, then, Hamas or something like it could not reconstitute itself, and some other more moderate leadership would emerge, and negotiations for some kind of stabilization could begin— fine.

But I genuinely do not understand what the theory of this is. You talked about how traumatized Israelis are. And they are. And every single person here who forgets that or does not take it seriously has walled themselves off from understanding the issue. Everything you say about that is right, and it actually infuriates me.

But do Palestinians not feel this grief? Are they not being traumatized right now? Not just the loss of life and the loss of children in particular, but the loss of homes of livelihoods. How do Israelis imagine a people as traumatized now as the Palestinians are, not them as an issue, but them as people? What security emerges from this?

So, again, whether it’s good or bad, I actually agree with you. Mr. Sinwar is an evil genius. And Israel walked right into his trap.

The head of Hamas.

Exactly. What’s the Sinwar genius? He put Israel in a kind of lose-lose situation. Mr. Sinwar is not only willing, but he wants to sacrifice the civilian population of Gaza in order to change the minds of the hearts of the civilian population of the United States of America and turn it against Israel. And he’s using the hostages in order to break the spirit of Israeli society.

So Mr. Sinwar understands what, sadly, our generals did not understand, which is war is not only a military operation, it’s not only about tanks and planes, that if you win the war in Khan Younis, but you lose it in Harvard Square, you lost the war. You lost the war. This is exactly what Sinwar wanted.

And sadly, the way the war was waged on our side— and I think we had to do it, and we had to defend ourselves, and we had the right to defend ourselves. But we should have been much more sophisticated. It should have been clear to any person watching television or TikTok or whatever in the United States that we are fighting Hamas, we are not fighting the Palestinians. And right now, the opposite has happened.

So definitely, I oppose the Rafah. Going into Rafah is exactly what Sinwar wants. If Israel will make that mistake, it will be a decisive, tragic mistake. Mr. Netanyahu, all his life, was a Churchill wannabe. He wanted to be Churchill. Here, he has an amazing tragic opportunity to be Churchill.

But what did Churchill do? Basically, two things. One, national unity, and two, he went to America. He went to Washington. He talked to F.D.R. He convinced F.D.R. to stand by Britain. This is what we should have done.

So I’m totally with you. We should not go into Rafah. We should find a way to end the Gaza war once all the hostages are back. We have to prevent a regional war, and we have to understand what kind of danger we all face.

Here, I’m going to ask you not to speak as you, but as a reporter and as somebody who knows the Israeli political and military establishments, because this is a place where putting it all on Netanyahu is simply not true. Benny Gantz, who is the likeliest next leader of Israel, he agrees that somehow, this war is going to achieve the goals. He agrees that they should go into Rafah.

If you look at the interview that Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, just gave to one of my colleagues, he agrees this war needs to be continued. Benny Morris, the revisionist historian who has done so much to increase our understanding of the expulsion of Arabs during Israel’s war that created the state, he agrees they need to go into Rafah.

So there is a wide agreement over anything you might call, from the right to the center-left, that they need to go in Rafah, that somehow this will make Israel safer, that Hamas can be sufficiently degraded. Why do they think something so many of us seem to think is not true, which is that what Hamas is, is not an idea, not an expression of rage that will find its way out, but a military unit?

So the good news is that quite a number of leading Israeli strategists, ex-generals, serious people have been saying in the last week or two what I just told you. They said going into Rafah would be to walk into a Sinwar trap. It’s a strategic trap, and we should not go into it. So on this issue, I’m not totally lonely. I think there are other people who think— look, don’t get me wrong. I think that eventually, Hamas has to be crushed.

Look, Hamas is threatening the lives of Israelis and the liberty of Palestinians. And we all have to unite in eradicating Hamas and liberate the Palestinians. I want Gaza to be Dubai by 2040, 2050. That’s the future of Gaza. We need to bring in a coalition of moderate Arabs and moderate Palestinians. We need a Marshall Plan for Gaza.

We need to turn it to something that every young person in Gaza who is suffering so much today will have a future, will have hope, definitely food and water. But much more than that, Gaza has to be an amazing project of the international community led by the moderate and rich Arabs, who have the resources, the capability, and who know how to deal with radical religious sentiments.

So we have to do that. But we’ll have to defeat Hamas. But I’m saying right now, this thing went so wrong. There is so much suffering. There is no hope. There is no breakthrough. We have to find a way to stop the fighting, again, once all the hostages are back. All the hostages have to be back. I want every Palestinian to feel that he has more freedom, more prosperity, more hope every year while Israel’s security is not in danger.

But this gets to something that you said a few minutes ago, which is the world cannot understand what Israel will or will not do. It cannot influence what Israel will or will not do until the trauma and the fear and the grief of Israelis is taken seriously, and that if you want to be a protest movement, if you want to be a politician, if you want to be a stakeholder that is somehow influencing Israel, you have to start there. And I believe you are right, but that is also true for Palestinians.

And what I hear is this sort of jumping, right, to this sort of world where there’s nothing like Hamas. There’s an international coalition. Somehow, so much money has been poured into Gaza that maybe Israel allowed this, which seems unlikely to me, but that it now looks like Dubai.

But before you get to any of that, you have somehow done something to take seriously the trauma, the grief, the anger, the fury, the loss of Palestinians. I mean, one thing your book does very well, is, I think force people to reckon, not with 1967 and the Six-Day War, but 1948 and the violence and the loss and the expulsions of that war, how they still shape the region, how they still shape how everybody sees each other. This one is fresher, right? This is happening right now.

You are right to demand the world take your grief seriously. You are right to demand they take your fear seriously. But what does it mean to take the grief and fear of Palestinians seriously? Because that is not something not just something I don’t see Israelis doing, but I don’t see anybody even discussing that it needs to happen. And if it doesn’t happen, then I don’t understand how you think you will ever live in peace or even live in security.

Once again, I totally agree. And I really— sorry for using psychological terms or emotional terms—

No, I think we need those here.

I think the conflict, this conflict, is about history, identity, and soul and feelings and humiliation and anger and fear. This is about if you— and again, part of the failure of previous peace processes, that they had an economic dimension, strategic dimension— they never dealt with the deeper identity issues, and you have to deal with them.

Look, I understand why Palestinians would hate me because of the conflict, the tragedy of the conflict. But Palestinian leadership, Yasir Arafat, and such people, the moderates, did not care enough about Palestinians. There was the old, almost ancient stink song, I hope the Russians love their children, too. And the Russians did love their children, too. And that’s why the first Cold War ended the way it ended.

But the problem that we don’t have enough constructive forces in the Palestinian leadership who would care about their own people. There are two terrible metaphors in the tragedy of the conflict in recent years. One was suicide bombing. What was suicide bombing, which were horrible 20 years ago, 25 years ago? Suicide bombing is when your hate for your enemy is stronger than your love for yourself.

And now we have the tunnels. Now we have the tunnels. Rather than build skyscrapers of hope in Gaza, everything went into these dark, evil tunnels. Each one of us has to cure his own society from the poison and all the toxic materials of the conflict that had poisoned all of us. We’re all poisoned, OK? We’re all poisoned. We need now a process of detox that helps both Israelis and Palestinians at the same time to move forward to something that is more constructive, which you now see in the Middle East, which was not the case before.

My Palestinian hero is Salam Fayyad. Salam Fayyad is the one Palestinian leader who really tried to do nation building. So, obviously, had his grievances regarding us, and I understand it, but he tried to build something. We need out of this chaos and mess and tragedy. We need Salam Fayyad attitude combined with an MBZ attitude.

Look, the good news in the Middle East is that the first time in a century, we have Arab modernity that works and is successful. And the Emirates are like the symbol and the example for that. Because what the United Emirates are all about, it’s about moving forward, solution, not going back to the past, not getting into victimhood, but building things. So if we will have M.B.Z.-like forces, supporting Salam Fayyad-like Palestinians, I think we can begin to move forward from the agony and suffering into something that is more promising.

You say if there was something like Salam Fayyad, who was a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, you would see a willing Israeli partner, but I had Salam Fayyad on this show a couple of months back, and people should go listen to it. And here was somebody who was doing everything you’re saying should be done, and frankly, at a better time in Israeli politics than this one.

And he had built up a lot more economic capacity within the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where he was governing. He had built up profound security cooperation. He had exiled and expelled much of Hamas. He had made the West Bank far safer. And what he says happened is he could not get the Israelis to work with him, that they would not stop their incursions. They would not loosen the restrictions. They would not make it easier for him to build.

Salam Fayyad had all kinds of problems, but he will tell you— he told me— that, really, his biggest one was that Israel wouldn’t hold up its end of the bargain. And so there is this truth that at many points, Israel has not had a partner who could deliver peace or even maybe wanted to deliver peace.

It is also true that there have been points when the Palestinians, or at least some Palestinians, have not had an Israeli partner to deliver peace because some Israelis don’t want it. Because they want the West Bank. Because they want control. Because they want Hamas and the Palestinian Authority split because they don’t want international support shifting to the Palestinians. So there is this tension between the call for someone like Salam Fayyad and then the actual historical experience of the actual living Salam Fayyad.

So after expressing my admiration for Salam Fayyad, I don’t want to do polemics regarding him. I really admire him, and I really want him back. I really think that he and people like him are an essential part of the solution, but I’ll say two things. One, Salam Fayyad had terrible problems with corruption in the Palestinian Authority, including by Mr. Abbas, who’s leading it. They wanted him out.

The second element that I want to remind you that while Salam Fayyad was in power, we had the prime minister in Israel by the name of Ehud Olmert, who went to the Annapolis Peace Summit with George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice and offered 100% of the territory back with some territorial exchange. Ehud Olmert made the most generous, some Israelis feel, reckless offer to the Palestinians, and it was rejected.

So after it was rejected, Netanyahu was elected. Israelis became— again, they are not profoundly more right-wing, but they are more skeptical, more fearful, more— it’s more difficult to bring them. We need to find a way to get out of this vicious circle. And again, don’t get me wrong— in the last 10 years, extreme right-wing Israeli governments and with a lot of influence of the settler parties and the extreme right, Israel was not there. But the reason they were elected was the failure of over 15 years, we tried the old peace, and it failed.

One thing threaded through your book is an appreciation of tragedy and a willingness to cede your own story, Israel’s story, the story of the Palestinians is a story of tragedy. And part of tragedy is timing, that there are moments where an opening exists for something else, and they’re missed. And then there’s a moment on the other side, and it’s missed.

And something I think that that history should teach us, or force us to reckon with, is that there’s not going to be perfection here. There are not going to be perfect leaders on either side. There’s not a Palestinian Authority free of corruption. Frankly, there’s not even right now a Palestinian Authority with legitimacy. There is not going to be an Israeli polity that moves from where it is now all the way to where you are or farther than that.

And so there is this question to me of what happens if this is where we are, if the Palestinians hate Israelis even more than ever after this, whenever the after this is, if Israelis are even more terrified of the security risk of what would happen to them if you had a Palestinian state that had sufficient self-determination to become strong, because a stronger and richer and freer such a state became, the more could one day exact revenge. I think that is how a lot of people think. So what if we don’t get perfect leaders? What if we don’t even get very good leaders, which is, I think, the recent history of this conflict? What then?

Look, we are all fearful now. The worst can happen. Ezra, remember my words. The worst may happen. What Oct. 7 and whatever happened since taught us is that it’s a make or break moment. If we will let things just deteriorated, horrible, horrible, horrible things might happen in the Middle East within a few years. So it’s a moral responsibility upon all of us to get to work and to create a different path and find a different path, so we can prevent catastrophe and actually bring back some hope.

Look, human life is a tragedy. We all die. We all die. We forget that some of the time, but we all die. And you make the most of the path of the road that you have on this good Earth. So we have to take this tragedy and act in a sensible, rational, pragmatic manner in order to bring it to a better place.

There’s this 1948 essay by the philosopher Hannah Arendt called “To Save the Jewish Homeland.” And the thing she’s describing — I’ve been thinking about this essay, which people can and should read online. And there’s a lot in here. But the thing she’s discussing is that there had been a cacophony of views about Israel, about Zionism, in the Jewish community. And then came the war, the fighting, the founding. And that collapsed into unanimity.

And she thought that the unanimity was very dangerous because what was needed at the founding of Israel was to take seriously the insights of the people who thought this could go very, very badly. And she says later in that essay that if you get the Israel of pure Zionism, the Israel pure confidence, that what you will end up getting is an Israel that ends up diverging from the interests of the Jewish diaspora.

The Jewish diaspora is deeply liberal. The Jewish diaspora is exilic Judaism, as people say it. It is the Judaism of being the stranger, the Judaism of being a refugee. My friend, Spencer Ackerman, the national security reporter, said at the beginning of this war something that I keep thinking about, that he cannot think of a less Jewish thing than to make another person a refugee.

And then there is what Israel is as a state, which it has made many people refugees, but it also has the interests of a state, and states change everybody, not just Jewish people. They make you very quickly forget the lessons of being a refugee. And that wedge of values, that is the thing that I think people are beginning to recognize and people in Israel are underemphasizing how dangerous it is for them.

I couldn’t agree more. So if I may, I’ll tell you, when I wrote “My Promised Land,” the chapter I loved writing most was the chapter about the 1950s because what Israel did in its first decade of existence is the most heroic and breathtaking enterprise one can imagine. 650,000 Jews absorbed one million refugees— no, one million immigrants, of which half were, or many of them were, Holocaust survivors and other refugees from the Arab world. It’s as if America today would absorb 500 million immigrants. I understand you have a slight problem with 7 million.

So it was an incredible, incredible achievement, but what’s so impressive about it that those people who came out of Auschwitz with numbers on their arms, with nightmares at night, they never surrendered to victimhood. They never saw themselves as victims. They didn’t hate. And for me, the beauty of being Jewish, of the Jewish tradition— I’m a non-observant Jew, but I’m a very passionate Jew. The beauty is that we are a universal tribe. We are a tribe, but with a universal mission and universal commitment.

And what happened in recent decades that Israel went into the tribal, the particular, while diaspora Jews, non-orthodox, went into the universal. And again, I think we should meet again at this universal tribalism, at this beauty of a tribe being proud of our heritage, of who we are. We have rights like any others, and we should not be ashamed of ourselves. We should be proud of ourselves, but at the same time, having universal values at the core of our existence, whether in Israel or in the diaspora.

But do people in the other political movements in Israel— I understand that they think that outside Israel, we’re naive; that outside Israel, we don’t understand— and this is probably true— what it feels like to live inside this kind of danger.

But do they actually understand that if they demand that the price of supporting Israel is to give up on universalism, to give up on all these other commitments that are core to the values of at least most Western Jews— I mean, you can see what our politics are. Some people will choose Israel. I mean, there is some evidence in fact. Post 10/7— and I understand this myself— like, it has forced me to deeply reengage with Israel. There is some people who will choose Israel.

They will say, push comes to shove, the particularism is dominant in me. There are many who won’t. And you can say a lot about what is happening on campuses, and you can say a lot about what is happening at the protests.

I got an email the other day from a grad student at Columbia, and he said something to me that I’ve been hearing from a lot of students, which is that he doesn’t feel the protests are antisemitic, though they do attract anti-Semites. What he does feel is that he is being asked to choose between a kind of thoroughgoing anti-Zionism, right? A Zionism that believes Israel to be a stain that must be erased, and being a sort of social progressive on his campus in good standing. And I don’t know what choice he’ll make. I don’t know what choice a lot of people make. But do people in Israel— this is my question as a Jew living in America. Do people in Israel, the kind of people in leadership in Israel, the Benny Gantz’s of the world, do they understand that if that is the choice ultimately, that a lot of people are going to choose their politics over a country they don’t live in?

That they don’t have this memory of it as a refuge or a miracle— they have a memory of it as something that makes their day-to-day defense of who they are difficult. Because that seems to me to be what’s happening to a lot of college students right now. I don’t know what they will choose, but it appears to me to be a more significant threat to the relationship between the diaspora and Israel than people in Israel really seem to realize.

I said before, and I’ll repeat it for once, you have justified criticism of Israel because there is wrongdoing. You have understandable criticism of Israel because some things that are actually justified, but it’s difficult to understand when you don’t get the complexity. There is the vicious criticism of Israel, and there’s anti-Semitism.

And I’ll tell you where I see the line crossed. When people deny the Jewish people’s right for self-determination and when people deny the Jewish people’s right for self-defense, that’s when vicious criticism becomes anti-Semitism. That’s the new anti-Semitism. Just the way that my great, great, great grandfather was treated in his shtetl in Eastern Europe as the odd person, as the other, as the one who is not like the others, this is the way the Jewish people is treated now by many— not all, but was treated by many.

And I say no. When you come to judge Israel, you should criticize many things, but take a universal standard. You want to criticize the way we wage war? Compare it to the way America waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places.

Look, I want to say I agree with you. I agree with you. And I think this point is fair. But the wedge being driven, the thing I want to push you to answer to, or at least think about here, the wedge being driven between Jewish students in Israel is not should Israel exist, do the Jewish people have a right to self-determination, but if Israel exists like this, if it is this Israel, if it keeps going down this path, is it really consistent with who you believe yourself to be to support it?

That there could be a self-determining Israel that you could support, yes, absolutely, but for a lot of us, frankly, for me, that’s not been around for 15 years. It’s easy to rebut the anti-Semite, but that’s not the thing that is going to wedge these Jews, these young Jews from Israel. The thing that is going to wedge them from Israel is actual things happening in Israel, the things that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and, frankly, Netanyahu actually say.

And so I don’t know. I worry sometimes people are— they have managed to convince themselves that if they can argue down the anti-Semites, they have solved the problem. But I think they are distracting themselves from the problem with the anti-Semites.

I don’t want this situation where it seems that Israel is in conflict with liberal America. This is unbearable for me. This is unbearable. So I think that the extreme right in Israel that speaks in the names of nationalism is destroying the nation state of the Jewish people. I think that some in the extreme right who speak in the name of Zionism endanger the Zionist project. And some in the extreme right who speak in the name of Judaism are betraying half the Jewish people.

How can extreme right and extreme Orthodox people speak in the name of Judaism and actually send away half or more than half of the Jewish people? We live in a free world, thank God. Still, I cannot expect any Jewish youngster, any young man or young girl, to stick to their Judaism and stick to their commitment to a Jewish state when that state turns its back on their values altogether. That doesn’t fly. It doesn’t work.

And I say it’s not only non-democratic and non-liberal— it’s non-Jewish. Look, talking about the Jewish mission of this time, we need to build a non-extremist Jewish coalition in the diaspora and Israel to fight the dark forces. Look, we are having a fight for— it’s a battle for Israel’s soul. It’s a real battle for Israel’s soul. We have dark forces. They are not the majority. They took over the government. They are not the majority, but they are there.

And in order to fight them, we all have to be much better than we were. We have to be much more courageous and smart politically. But we need a kind of great Jewish coalition for that. So let’s take this grave danger that we are now all aware of and deal with it.

Again, in my admiration to the Herzls and the Weizmanns and the Ben-Gurions, is, when they thought a terrible threat, they rose to the challenge. And they changed reality in an amazing way. Chaim Weizmann, one of the Zionist leaders, used to say, you don’t have to be crazy to be a Zionist, but it helps. They were a bunch of dreamers. They dealt with an impossible reality.

Today, there is so much more that we have in Israel, and you have in the diaspora. We still have more resources, more power, more energy. But we have to address this danger. And it’s a double danger. It’s a danger from without, the attacks of the anti-Semites in America and Europe and elsewhere, and the dangers of the radicals in the Middle East, and the danger from within, of losing our soul. We must not lose our soul. We have to win the battle for Israel’s soul.

I think that’s the place to end. Always our final question— what are three books you would recommend to the audience?

One of the things we need today is not only victims, but heroes, democratic heroes. So the three books about heroes that I appreciate, one is about Rosalind Franklin. And Rosalind Franklin was a scientist, happened to be a Jewish British scientist. She contributed dramatically to the discovery of the D.N.A. code. And she was intellectually dispossessed. They took away her life’s work, and she died brokenhearted at the age of 38.

And what I see in her is scientific heroism, feminist heroism. She is also family. She was my mother’s second cousin. And then a book, a biography, actually brought her resurrection, in a way. And today, she is so appreciated. So I find an element of hope in that.

The second book that I really have been reading in the year before Oct. 7 when we had all this internal struggle in Israel was Taylor Branch’s “Parting the Waters” about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. The book is beautifully written and very comprehensive, but what Martin Luther King brings us is the best of what happened in the postwar era. I think that all oppressed people in the Middle East or elsewhere, I think it’s an inspiration to fight for their rights, but within the context of universal values and the peaceful struggle.

And my third one is Truman. Truman is so dear to my heart because first of all, he was like the unlikely hero, the surprising hero. The fact that you come from the people and you serve the people, and you don’t forget that you are one of them, I find endearing.

He enabled the world of Rosalind Franklin and the world of Martin Luther King because he created the postwar, World War II order, that gave humanity its best 70, 80 years. And I really, really hope we will find the Harry Truman of our time who will deal with the amazing challenges we will face and lead us to a hopeful future.

Ari Shavit, thank you very much.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon and Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon.

The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

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• May 10, 2024   •   1:02:30 This Is a Very Weird Moment in the History of Drug Laws
• May 7, 2024   •   1:04:33 Watching the Protests From Israel
• April 30, 2024   •   1:03:00 Cows Are Just an Environmental Disaster
• April 26, 2024 Salman Rushdie Is Not Who You Think He Is
• April 23, 2024   •   56:06 This Conversation Made Me a Sharper Editor
• April 16, 2024   •   49:17 A $1.7 Million Toilet and Liberalism’s Failure to Build
• April 12, 2024   •   1:33:07 What if Dario Amodei Is Right About A.I.?
• April 5, 2024   •   1:25:33 Will A.I. Break the Internet? Or Save It?
• April 2, 2024   •   1:14:31 How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?
• March 29, 2024   •   1:18:30 The Rise of ‘Middle-Finger Politics’
• March 22, 2024   •   1:08:32 The Deep Conflict Between Our Work and Parenting Ideals

Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’

Ultimately, the Gaza war protests sweeping campuses are about influencing Israeli politics. The protesters want to use economic divestment, American pressure and policy, and a broad sense of international outrage to change the decisions being made by Israeli leaders.

So I wanted to know what it’s like to watch these protests from Israel. What are Israelis seeing? What do they make of them?

[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App , Apple , Spotify , Amazon Music , YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts .]

Ari Shavit is an Israeli journalist and the author of “ My Promised Land ,” the best book I’ve read about Israeli identity and history. “Israelis are seeing a different war than the one that Americans see,” he tells me. “You see one war film, horror film, and we see at home another war film.”

This is a conversation about trying to push divergent perspectives into relationship with each other: On the protests, on Israel, on Gaza, on Benjamin Netanyahu, on what it means to take societal trauma and fear seriously, on Jewish values, and more.

You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App , Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts . View a list of book recommendations from our guests here .

(A full transcript of this episode is available here .)

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Claire Gordon and Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Lydia Polgreen, Dalit Shalom and Sonia Herrero.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

How-To Geek

How to make only one page landscape in a word document.

Sometimes landscape is just the way to go.

Quick Links

Turn specific pages landscape by inserting a break, change specific pages to landscape with page setup.

By default, Microsoft Word orients its pages in portrait view. While this is fine in most situations, you may have page or group of pages that would look better in landscape view. Here are two ways to make this happen.

Regardless of which method you use, be aware that if the text runs over to an extra page as a result of the rotation, that new page will also adopt the landscape orientation.

You can make a page or group of pages landscape by using section breaks , but there are slight differences in how to do this depending on the position of those pages in your document.

Enable Show/Hide

Unless you change your settings, section breaks are invisible pagination controls and can cause confusion if you forget where you've added them. To make them visible, click the Show/Hide (¶) icon in the Paragraph group of the Home tab.

Re-orientate the First Page or Pages

Place your cursor at the end of the page or pages you want to change to landscape. In the Layout tab, click "Breaks," and choose "Next Page." This inserts a next page section break in your document.

With your cursor on the first page (before the section break you just added), in the Layout tab, click "Orientation," and pick "Landscape."

This changes the first page or group of pages (depending on where you added your section break) to landscape.

Re-orientate Pages in the Middle of Your Document

If you have three or more pages, and you need to change the middle page or pages to landscape, place your cursor at the start of the first page you want to change. Then, as before, in the Layout tab, click "Breaks" and "Next Page." This inserts a section break at the start of the pages you want to re-orientate.

Next, with your cursor at the beginning of the new section you have just created, head to the Layout tab, click "Orientation," and then click "Landscape." This changes the current and all subsequent pages to landscape view.

But, as you only want certain pages in the middle of your document to be landscape, you'll need to add a second page break at the end of your landscape section.

Then, click anywhere after this new section break, and use the Orientation option in the Layout tab to turn the remaining pages to portrait, leaving the pages in between your section breaks in landscape view.

Re-orientate the Last Page or Pages

To change the end of your document to landscape, simply place your cursor at the start of this final section, add a next page section break here, and change the orientation accordingly (using the same steps as outlined above).

To delete a section break, place your cursor before the paragraph marker (¶), and press Delete.

Another way to convert a page or a number of adjacent pages from portrait to landscape in Word is to select the content and turn only those pages manually. This method works with text, images , tables, and other items you have on the page.

Select all items on the page or pages you want to rotate 90 degrees. If you have text, drag your cursor through all of it. If you have an image, table, chart, or another type of object, simply select it.

In the Layout tab, click the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Page Setup group.

In the Page Setup dialog box that opens, confirm that you're on the Margins tab . In the Orientation section, choose "Landscape." Then, at the bottom, change the "Apply To" drop-down choice to "Selected Text," and click "OK."

When the dialog box closes, you will see the pages you selected turn to landscape view.

While this method is the simplest, you may run into difficulties. For instance, if you have an image or table with text wrapped around it , changing the page's orientation may alter its layout. Also, you might run into difficulties if you want to add more landscape pages to your document. The most structurally secure way to change page orientation is through the first method described at the top of this article.

If you use Google Docs, you can change the page orientation in Google Docs just as easily.

6 Things You Can Do on Microsoft Word That You Can't on Google Docs

Quick links.

• Use the Desktop App Seamlessly Without an Internet Connection
• Open and Edit PDFs More Easily
• Access More Templates
• Straightforward Mail Merging
• More Options for Styles
• More Tools and Options

Having used Google Docs in my previous workplaces and Microsoft Word at home, I've got years of experience of both. But when deciding which is better, I always fall back on my argument that Word offers several benefits that Docs doesn't, so Microsoft's product will always be my number one.

1. Use the Desktop App Seamlessly Without an Internet Connection

If you're a Microsoft 365 subscriber, once you've downloaded the Microsoft Word desktop app to your computer, you don't need an internet connection to use most of its features. Of course, anytime you want to share something from any app, you'll need to be online, but all of Word's many advanced document production and editing features are available even in the most remote corners of the planet.

What's more, even if you do have an internet connection, you might choose to disable the automatic OneDrive sync anyway, as your data is much more secure when you're working offline. Just remember to save your work as you go!

As Google Docs is an online program, you can't work without an internet connection, and your work automatically uploads to Google Drive, which can pose a risk if you're using an insecure internet connection. Yes, Google Docs does support offline access , but the setup is complicated. First, you need an internet connection to access the offline version of the program, and you're forced to use one of two browsers that many people prefer to steer clear of ( Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome ). Then, you have to play with your browser settings, and finally, you need to download an extension.

All in all, the ability to easily work offline on Microsoft Word makes it a more convenient and secure option than Google Docs.

2. Open and Edit PDFs More Easily

Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs let you open and edit a PDF, but the former executes this process much more smoothly than the latter. Not only do you have to upload the PDF to your Google Drive to do this on Google Docs (you can simply use a PDF on your desktop when using Microsoft Word), but there are slight differences in the formatting that make Microsoft Word the winner.

To see this in action, we first created a document on Microsoft Word and saved it as a PDF .

When we re-opened the PDF as a Microsoft Word document, except for an additional paragraph marker at the end of the sixth line, the formatting was identical.

But when we opened it as a Google Doc, the first line was indented, the alignment to the right of the image was inconsistent, and there was an additional paragraph marker at the start of the seventh line.

For fairness, we also created a document on Google Docs and followed the same process. Unsurprisingly, we had similar outcomes.

So, if you were to open a large PDF in Google Docs, you would have to make far more manual adjustments to regain the original formatting than in Microsoft Word.

3. Access More Templates

Templates are great for saving time when you already know what type of document you are creating, and both Microsoft Word and Google Docs have a wide choice of different types. Where Word far excels, however, is the sheer number of templates it has to offer from within the program.

On Google Docs, there are 55 templates (as at May 2024), all of which are formal documents, such as resumes, reports, and essays. In fairness to Google, you do also have access to many more, but you have to download an app to get them.

On the other hand, whether you're using the Microsoft 365 desktop app or accessing Word for the web, you have instant access to thousands of templates, ranging from formal contracts to calendars to flowery invitations. Word also has a useful search bar, so you can find a template more quickly—a feature Google Docs doesn't yet have. Even better, you can select a suitable color palette when browsing Word's templates.

4. Straightforward Mail Merging

Microsoft Word is well-known as the home of mail merges, simply because you can complete the process natively through the desktop app. That is to say, if you want to send personalized versions of a document to many people, you can do that by just using Microsoft Word (and if you already have your recipients' details on Microsoft Outlook or on Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, you can also use Word alongside those).

As you can see in the screenshot below, after clicking "Select Recipients" in the Mailings tab on the ribbon, you can either create the mailing list within your document or use a list from elsewhere.

You can also launch a step-by-step wizard to help you with your mail merging if you're a first-timer—simply click "Start Mail Merge," and you will see the wizard appear as an option.

Google Docs falls far short in this regard, as you have to install an add-on to complete the same task. Admittedly, you can't mail-merge on Word for the web, but its simplicity in the desktop app is just one of the many ways paying for the Microsoft 365 subscription is worth every penny. Being able to save the finalized documents on your desktop app and choosing more specific printing options is also an added bonus of Word's mail-merging capacity.

5. More Options for Styles

Having the option to select styles in your document means you can quickly and consistently format your main text, headings, and other elements within your work, and they also make it easier to create an automatic table of contents. If you're someone who likes to do this, you've got much more scope to make your document look exactly how you want on Microsoft Word than you have on Google Docs.

Here's what the Styles menu looks like on Word for the web and the Microsoft Word desktop app:

And here's what it looks like on Docs:

On Word's desktop app, you have 18 preset styles to choose from, compared to only nine on Google Docs. On Word for the web, you have even more choice when you click "See More Styles." The main issue with only having nine on Google Docs is that once you've used all nine, you can't create any more. On Word, however, you can create as many as you want.

Another benefit of using styles on Word—whether you're using the desktop app or Word for the web—is that you can see previews of the styles before you make your selection, but the menu on Google Docs doesn't offer this luxury.

And the process on Microsoft Word is far less cumbersome. Word has a dedicated Styles group in the Home tab, but Docs is a small, tucked-away drop-down menu that's far less navigable. In Word, you apply the styles to the paragraphs and then modify the styles in a dialog box, and all the paragraphs with that style name will update. On Docs, you have to type some text and then match the style with what you typed, but it's never clear whether that particular style name is already used elsewhere in your document. In short, it's just not quite as simple.

6. More Tools and Options

Microsoft Word was first created in 1983, while Google Docs came 23 years later in 2006, so Word has far more tools and options across its many menus. Some people say that Word has too many options, which can cause processing delays or make it difficult to quickly find the tools you need. But there's no doubt that Word is a much more powerful processor, and if you need to create or edit documents on a daily basis, as I do, then Word's vast array of opportunities makes it by far the better choice of the two.

Now that you know Word is the best choice, use the powerful software to create your professional documents for school or work.