How Long Should a Claim Be in an Essay: How Do You Start a Claim Sentence?

Even though you want to get to the point in your essay, you still need to build up to it. That’s because your paper won’t be effective if you don’t present an argument. And you do this by supporting your main claim. But just how long should a claim be in an essay?

Don’t let this question remain unanswered anymore. This blog post will tell you exactly how long your claim should be based on the topic of your essay. It will also teach you how to write a strong claim and claim sentence starters.

Let’s jump right in.

How Long Should a Claim Be in an Essay

Your claim sentence should be precise, short, and about two lines long. In addition, they should be as specific as possible and precisely state what you are arguing in your paper and how you intend to prove it. However, sometimes, you can write up to three sentences for a claim depending on the topic and its complexity.

Specific claims help you formulate an essay outline because they give you an idea of how many points you need to make to support your argument. And when writing an essay, it’s essential to make sure that you have enough evidence to support your claims. However, it can be hard to determine how much evidence is needed for a claim, but the key is to use enough evidence so that the readers can understand what you mean by what you say.

Also see: Does an informative essay need a counterclaim?

If you opt for a three-sentence approach, the first one states your claim and gives an overview of the topic. You can also use it to introduce any relevant background information. The second sentence explains why or how your claim is valid. Finally, the third sentence should offer a summary of everything that has been discussed in the previous two sentences.

How Do You Write a Strong Claim in an Essay?

Writing a strong claim is one of the most important parts of crafting an essay but also challenging. However, here is how to navigate.

1. Research and brainstorm

Brainstorming involves coming up with as many ideas as possible related to your topic. You can use mind maps or any other method that works for you but try not to get too bogged down with the details at this stage. 

Another option is to do some free association where you write whatever comes into your head without overthinking how it relates to the topic. For example, if you were writing about food, some words might include restaurants, fast food, and pizza.

Once you’ve done your brainstorming session, pick out some good ideas and start writing them down in order of importance. At this stage, don’t worry about grammar or spelling, but rather about the specific points. If necessary, refine each of these points by adding more details.

2. Make it assertive

Assertion means stating your position on a topic. This is the most crucial part of any essay because it’s where you tell readers what you think.

A strong claim clearly states the writer’s opinion and supports it with facts and evidence. On the other hand, a weak claim is vague or ambiguous, so it doesn’t have enough information to support it.

3. Make it specific

The key to writing a strong claim is to be as specific as possible. If you can’t do that, your essay will lack focus, and the reader won’t know if they agree with your point of view or not.

For example, the claim, “The best way to learn English is by watching movies in English,” is too general and vague. It doesn’t tell us anything about what kind of movies or what language level the student should be at when watching them.

But we can make it more specific by rewriting it. For example, “Watching movies in English allows students to improve their listening skills because they hear words spoken out loud, which helps them recognize patterns in pronunciation and gain confidence speaking with native speakers.” 

This statement tells exactly how watching movies has helped you improve your English skills and why it would also benefit other students.

4. Make it provable

Any essay’s claim must be provable with statistics, facts and evidence. This is because such convinces your reader about your argument’s validity. It also shows that you have done your research and have enough information to support your claims.

How Do You Start a Claim Sentence?

The claim sentence is the first sentence of the paragraph and should begin with a topic sentence that states what you will talk about. These are also called thesis statements or arguments and are the core of the essay or paragraph.

A simple way to start a sentence with a claim is by asserting something specific in the world. For example: “I think dogs are more intelligent than cats.” This statement might be true or false depending on whether dogs really are smarter than cats. However, there are many ways to make strong assertions without being too general.

Also, you can start a claim with a rhetorical question. This will wake up your reader and get them interested in what you have to say.

No matter how you start your claim, you must make it attention-grabbing so that readers become interested and read the entire essay and learn something. Some starters include;

• I intend to show
• I know _________ is true because 
• I determined that 
• I believe that 
• The cause of _______ is 
• Scientists have proven that 
• I support the idea that
• The factors that contribute to ________ are