A prolific painter of portraits before and after the French Revolution ...

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explaining:
the writing process
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As was to become typical in hair-coloring ads, the age of the model was
a good ten years younger than the typical product user. The model is in
her early thirties (witness the age of the child), too young to have gray
hair.
This inspirational motif was picked up later for other Clairol products:
“If I’ve only one life . . . let me live it as a blonde!” “Every woman
should be a redhead . . . at least once in her life!” “What would your husband
say if suddenly you looked 10 years younger?” “Is it true blondes have
more fun?” “What does he look at second?” And, of course, “The closer he
gets, the better you look!”
But these slogans for different brand extensions only work because
Miss Clairol had done her job. She made hair coloring possible, she made
hair coloring acceptable, she made at-home hair coloring—dare I say it—
empowering. She made the unique into the commonplace. By the 1980s,
the hairdresser problem had been long forgotten and the follow-up lines
read, “Hair color no natural, they’ll never know for sure.”
Hook: “aspirational motif”
Transition: “But”
Hook: “these slogans”
B ODY PARAGRAPHS
Body paragraphs in expository writing are the main paragraphs
in an essay, excluding any introductory, concluding, or transition paragraphs.
They often contain the following features:
• Topic sentence: To promote clarity and precision, writers often use topic
sentences to announce the main ideas of paragraphs. The main idea should
be clearly related to the writer’s thesis. A topic sentence usually occurs early
in the paragraph (first or second sentence) or at the end of the paragraph.
• Unity: To avoid confusing readers, writers focus on a single idea for each
paragraph. Writing unified paragraphs helps writers—and their readers—
concentrate on one point at a time.
• Coherence: To make their writing flow smoothly from one sentence to the
next, writers supplement their shaping strategies with coherence devices:
repeated key words, pronouns referring to key nouns, and transition words.
The following body paragraphs from James Twitchell’s “Miss Clairol’s ‘Does
She . . . Or Doesn’t She?’ ” illustrates these features. The second sentence in the first
paragraph is the topic sentence for the first paragraph—and the second paragraph as
well.That topic sentence focuses our attention on the process of “automatic color tinting.”
These two paragraphs have unity because they keep the focus on the “automatic”
process of hair tinting. The two paragraphs also achieve coherence through
the use of transitions and repeated key words and ideas.
PROFESSIONAL COPY—NOT FOR RESALE