Which sentence best states the main idea in this excerpt? Life sentences should not be given to nonviolent offenders.
Life sentences most affect people with substance abuse problems.
Most people who are given life sentences were convicted of nonviolent crimes.
Many people who are given life sentences were charged with a drug offense.

quite an interesting way to teach topic sentences, because the answer to this question is the best definition of a topic sentence that one can present, it is as if answering the questions taught you how to do it, this is some real teaching, it is terribly well-done.

the topic sentence in this paragraph is:

topic sentences writers stay on track and keep a paragraph from becoming an aimless collection of sentences about an idea.

which incidentally tells you what a topic sentence should be.

i'm going to go whit a

dependent clause!

example: "before the food gets cold"

this map shows the geographic distribution of different tidal cycles along some earth's coastlines. areas experiencing tides are marked in yellow and experience one low tide and one high tide each day.