The conclusion
The conclusion is much like a short version of your introduction: you’ll restate the main points and wrap everything up. Don’t introduce new information here!
There are three steps to writing a good conclusion:
- Restate the thesis
- Summarize the main points
- End with a “closer” sentence
Let’s follow these steps to write an effective conclusion paragraph for the same prompt we’ve used in the other examples.
Restate the thesis
You’ve already written a thesis in your introduction paragraph. for the conclusion, just take the same concept and shorten it into a single sentence.
Below is our example introduction and an example body paragraph. A full essay would include two more body paragraphs, but for clarity, we’ve omitted them here and will jump to the conclusion. The restatement of the thesis is at the end, in bold.
Consider the abilities of social media. A person that has moved across the country can see a post from an old friend and maintain some connection. Reddit groups of all flavors offer a community for just about anyone looking to connect and find ideas. I am a daily user of social media. However, when left unchecked, social media has detrimental effects, especially on young people.
Social media jeopardizes the mental health of young people. Consider the example of following a particular influencer. People as young as 13 can make an Instagram account and follow whomever they choose. I was one who joined Instagram in middle school and became obsessed with another influencer: an older college girl named Kayla. I studied the outfits Kayla wore, copied her makeup tutorials, and cried about how my 14-year-old body didn’t look like a college girl’s. After a year of comparison, I lost my sense of identity and realized that I was a copy-cat version of someone else. It made me sick. As I took baby steps to lower and change my social media usage, unfollowing Kayla and other toxic influencers, I felt happier and less stressed. While some argue that social media brings young people together, my experience has taught me that it breaks people down.
Social media does more harm than good to young people.
See how the restatement of the thesis is just a single sentence? It serves as a reminder of what you argued throughout your essay.
Summarize the main points
The summary of the main points reminds the audience of the reasons behind your thesis. You can do this in three separate sentences, one per body paragraph, or you can combine them all into a single list with a colon.
Our example uses the second approach with a list and a colon.
Social media does more harm than good to young people. It particularly harms three things: mental health, in-person social life, and academic performance.
It’s very short, but it effectively summarizes the main points we’ve made during the essay.
End with a “closer” sentence
The “closer” sentence is the last sentence of your essay, meant to neatly wrap things up and summarize everything. Writing a perfect closer is hard. Don’t stress out if you find yourself running out of time! Saying anything to summarize your essay is better than cutting it short and ending suddenly.
Here’s our complete example of a conclusion paragraph with a closer:
Social media does more harm than good to young people. It particularly harms three things: mental health, in-person social life, and academic performance. The glitter of social media may be hard to resist. However, its effects are catastrophic and, whether we’d like to admit it or not, inevitable.
This ending sentence summarizes the entire essay. As a bonus, it includes a piece of a counterargument, i.e., an opposing view the audience may be considering while reading your essay. This helps the closer sound different from the restatement of the thesis. Otherwise, it can feel a bit repetitive.
And that’s it for the conclusion! This should be the quickest and easiest part of your essay to write because you are simply summarizing what you have already written.