Writing Center
Youngstown State University

Strategies for Effective Conclusions

From one point of view, the conclusion of your essay is its most important part. Why work so long and hard at composing a stimulating introduction and well-developed body paragraphs if your effect is to be weakened by your conclusion? Your conclusion is your last word on the subject, a last chance to make your point to your readers. A weak, abrupt, or uninteresting conclusion can detract greatly from what would otherwise be a memorable essay. Hence, a strong concluding statement is essential. It should focus your reader's attention on your main points and hold that attention as effectively as the introduction does.

A conclusion should sum up, give readers a sense of completeness or finality, and perhaps help convince them. A common way to achieve these goals is to restate the essay's controlling idea, thereby underscoring the points the entire essay has made and presenting them one final time. Often this restatement appears in the first sentence or two of the conclusion.

You can then expand your discussion by making some general concluding remarks, perhaps ending with a strong emphatic statement as a climax. In general, the conclusion can be said to be shaped like this:

Restatement of controlling idea

General concluding remarks

Final statement.

Six Commonly Used Concluding Strategies

Restatement- This is the most familiar type of conclusion. The controlling idea is repeated in different words, and the main points of the essay's argument are reviewed or restated. A straightforward essay, whose introductory paragraph is a direct announcement, will often end this way. Restatement has the advantage of reinforcing one last time all your major points. For this reason, it can be an excellent concluding strategy for an essay which seeks to prove a point. The following example illustrates a conclusion using the restatement technique:

It is clear from even a casual trip through much of Appalachia that this region presents a challenge to a social planner. But before any utopian schemes can be considered, basic needs must be met. The region's main problems remain very basic: adequate housing, poor nutrition, and a lack of educational facilities.

Chronological Wind-up - when a piece of writing is narrative, it is natural to have its final paragraph tie up all loose ends by ending with what happened last. Personal experience essays and stories narrated in the first person normally use this method. For example, this student ends a personal experience essay with a chronological wind-up:

The next few years of my life passed quickly, probably because I was so busy. In the space of three years, I got my equivalency diploma and held down three jobs-- in sales, in the restaurant business, and in a men's clothing store. I also hitchhiked around the country. When I came back from my trip, I decided to return to school, and that's how I ended up in this English class, taking the first step toward getting a college degree.

Illustration - To make an abstract or general conclusion more concrete and specific, you may choose to follow a broad restatement of your controlling idea with an example to illustrate it. A relevant news item can often serve this purpose. Similarly, a personal experience essay--or any story told in the first person--may conclude with an example that strikes a personal note. You can make a general or abstract conclusion more convincing if you provide an analogy with another situation. A student essay about the perils of living at college concludes with this analogy:

In many ways, learning the "ins" and "outs" of living on campus is almost like taking a survival course. This training is not as thorough as what the army would put you through, but it comes close; it is learning survival in society instead of in the wilderness.

Prediction - Writing designed to convince or persuade your readers may very naturally end with a prediction that takes the conclusion a step further than a summary. This type of conclusion does sum up the essay's main points, but it also enables the writer to make certain additional projections on the basis of those points. For example, a nursing student ended his paper for a public health course with this prediction:

Even though there has not been a case of smallpox in the United States for years, children should still be vaccinated against this disease. Despite the assurances of many doctors to the contrary, some physicians still recommend this course of action. As far as this vocal minority is concerned, it is extremely likely that failure to immunize against smallpox could result in an outbreak of epidemic proportions, just like the one that recently occurred in Somalia.

Recommendation of a Course of Action - When you feel you have convinced your readers, you may want to recommend action. In persuasive writing, it can be psychologically very effective to conclude by appealing to the reader for action. For example, note how this student concluded his essay which discussed the harmful effects of food additives:

Every month, the Food and Drug Administration finds that another food additive has harmful effects on humans. In spite of this, food processors seem reluctant to eliminate additives from their food. It seems as if the only way we, the consumers, will be able to make our desires felt is to stop buying food that contains artificial preservatives and flavor enhancers. It is time for us to take an active part in determining what we eat.

Note: The writer's use of "It is time" is characteristic of this type of concluding strategy.

Quotation and Dialogue - As in the introduction, a quotation can lend authority to a conclusion. Quotations by well-known authors can sometimes sum up your essay handsomely as well as enable you to use their distinctive writing styles to add variety and interest in your conclusion. This conclusion uses the words of a character from literature to sum up:

In its tone and its theme, The Lost Days illustrates Dickson's mixed attitude toward capitalism. On the one hand, he felt that the ideal represented by capitalism was good and fair-minded. On the other hand, Dickson could not ignore the many inequalities being perpetuated by that system, inequalities best expressed by the character of Jacob when he said, "The unfairness I have seen in my life became more bitter when I realized that it was done in the name of fairness; it was done in the name of equal opportunity and of capitalism" (347).

E-mail your comments and suggestions to the YSU Grant Team (cardcat@bgnet.bgsu.edu).