Conclusions are among the hardest parts of an essay to write well. You need to round off your essay effectively. For more info https://voiceskills.org/

1. CAPTIVATING CONCLUSIONS

2.  Conclusions are among the hardest parts of
an essay to write well. You need to round off
your essay effectively. You need to leave
your reader with the best possible impression
of your work. And, you need to somehow
recap all your central points without simply
repeating yourself. Sound like a tricky
balancing act? We explain it all in more depth
below - read on for our tips on how to
conclude an essay effectively.

3. HOW DO I CONCLUDE AN ESSAY?
 What is a conclusion? It’s a question that
seems, on the face of it, to have a perfectly
simple answer. It’s the paragraph (or so) at the
end of your essay where you bring your essay
to a stop by recapping your central arguments,
right? Easy.
 If you were asked to list a few synonyms for an
essay conclusion, I am willing to bet you’d
come up with a few words or phrases like
“recap”, “summary”, “restatement of your
thesis”, and so on. And it’s true you’re likely to
find all of this somewhere in the conclusion of
an essay.

4.  "Words and phrases like 'recap', 'summary' and
'restatement of your thesis' don't accurately describe
what an essay conclusion is. A conclusion is so much
more, and a lot hinges on how well it is done."
 But none of the phrases above fully grasp the
function of an essay conclusion. In fact, taking any
one of them to be entirely synonymous with an essay
conclusion is likely to lead you down the path towards
writing bad essay conclusions, or at least missed-
opportunity conclusions - conclusions that don’t take
full advantage of their place at the end of the essay to
fulfill their rhetorical potential.

5. OK THEN, HOW DO I AVOID CONCLUDING AN
ESSAY BADLY?
 Before we get to answer the question of what
an essay conclusion is, it’s useful to spend
moment thinking about some of the things an
essay conclusion isn’t.

6. IT’S NOT A REPEAT OF YOUR INTRODUCTION.
 Every university instructor has encountered an essay
where a student has copied and pasted, almost word-
for-word, their introduction at the bottom of their
essay. It should be obvious that there’s no point in
doing this. You're just eating up words by repeating
the same information over again. And if a conclusion
were simply a rehash of the introduction, there
wouldn’t be any point in ending the essay with it. You
could just end with your final body paragraph
argument. Or, if you really wanted your reader to read
the introduction again and remind themselves of your
central arguments, you could simply say something
like, “See introduction”!

7.  OK, so copying and pasting the introduction is
an extreme example, and you’re probably
thinking “there’s no way I’d do something like
that.” But it’s fairly common for students to
conclude an essay by simply rephrasing their
introduction. Just paraphrasing yourself while
retaining all the content of your introduction isn’t
a whole lot different from the copy-paste job.
You’re still just going through the motions and
repeating the same information without really
getting to grips with the dedicated function a
conclusion is supposed to fulfill.

8. IT’S NOT JUST A SUMMARY OF YOUR BODY
PARAGRAPHS.
 Another common trap students fall into is to
view the essay conclusion simply as a recap.
They conclude an essay by providing a concise
summary of each of the arguments they’ve
made. This kind of recap can form an important
part of your conclusion, especially in longer
essays where you’ve made a series of complex
arguments. But, as with repeating your
introduction, eating up valuable word count
simply to rehash stuff you’ve already said is
redundant and doesn’t fulfill any sort of
rhetorical or persuasive function.

9. IT’S NOT A PLACE TO ADD NEW CONTENT OR
MAKE NEW ARGUMENTS.
 Yes, your essay conclusion shouldn’t be simply
a recap, a summary, or a repeat of what you’ve
already written in your essay. But it is a place
where you reflect on the arguments you’ve
made rather than starting to introduce anything
new.
 And here’s where the whole business of how to
conclude an essay starts to get a bit
complicated. If a conclusion is neither simply a
recap of old information nor a place for new
information, what is it, exactly?

10. A CONCLUSION IS A SALES PITCH!
 If you’ve been paying attention you may have seen
that we’ve already mentioned “rhetoric” a couple of
times so far in this post - and this is no accident. You
can’t really talk about essay conclusions without
talking about rhetoric. The conclusion to an essay is
the most purely rhetorical part of the entire piece.
 By “rhetorical”, it is a conclusion’s (and indeed the
entire essay’s) ability to convince or persuade the
reader of certain outlooks or arguments. An essay
conclusion needs to use rhetoric to emotionally
connect with the reader in some way. And this is done
through the use of certain language and the way the
information is presented.

11.  If alarm bells are starting to ring at the mention of rhetoric,
quiet them. Rhetoric gets a bad name in public discourse.
Phrases like “pure rhetoric” or “empty rhetoric” are often
used to suggest that an utterance lacks substance or
integrity, or is somehow dishonest or insincere. And those
are the last things you want your reader to take away
from reading your essay! But rhetoric is one of the oldest
scholarly disciplines in the world. In Classical societies -
and in fact right up to the beginning of the twentieth
century - it was considered one of the most important
disciplines throughout Western society. The fact that it’s
acquired something of a bad name over the last hundred
years or so doesn’t mean it’s not still the foundation of
good writing.

12.  More importantly, your rhetorical skills can make a
huge difference to whether your reader actually buys
your argument. Let’s say we have two writers. One is
skilled in rhetoric; the other less so. Both could make
an identical set of arguments with the same
supporting evidence and elicit entirely different
responses in their readers. It’s true that the excessive
use of rhetorical flourishes can rub your reader up the
wrong way. It could cause them to think your essay is
more about style than substance. But the subtler
cues - in the way you phrase, structure, and present
your arguments - can unquestionably make the
difference between winning over a skeptical audience
and leaving them unmoved.

13.  "How you phrase, structure, and present arguments in
your essay conclusion can make the difference between
winning over a skeptical audience and leaving them
unmoved - which could easily make a difference to your
overall grade."
 So what does all this have to do with how you conclude
an essay? This can all seem a bit abstract when we’re
dealing with essay writing, so let’s try an analogy. Let’s
imagine you’re delivering a sales pitch for a property
company. That company is trying to sell waterfront
properties in a desirable holiday location - the Caribbean,
say. Your audience is a set of moderately well-off
individuals who regularly take expensive holidays. But,
they’re not sure they can afford to buy a second home in
the Caribbean. Even if they can afford it, they’re unclear if
it would be a good investment.

14.  To convince the members of your audience that they
want to buy one of your properties, you’re going to
have to conduct quite a detailed pitch. It could easily
take a couple of hours or more to list the features of
the property, the merits of the location, and the
financial arrangements that will allow buyers to fund
their purchase. You’ll make many arguments
throughout your pitch, not all of which will be equally
exciting. Sure, you’ll tell your potential customers
about the balcony that leads off the master bedroom,
the distance to the beach, and the amenities of the
town in which the properties are located.

15.  But your customers will also want to know
other details: can they let the property while
they’re not using it, for example? What kind
of returns will that bring, and will these be
enough to offset the purchase price? How
are properties taxed in the area? And how
about the facilities the local authority will
provide? What kind of sanitation and waste
facilities does the property have? Is it
connected to a sewer or does it use a septic
tank?

16.  If the buyer is going to sign on the dotted line when
it’s all done, you’re going to have to provide
convincing answers to all of these questions. But
simply recapping your arguments in order isn’t going
to end the presentation effectively. You don’t want the
lingering thought in your audience’s mind to be taxes
or sewage. And you certainly don’t want to hit them
with any new detail in your closing few slides. In fact,
you don’t really want them to leave the presentation
with any of the details you’ve discussed uppermost in
their mind. Dwelling on any of the details is likely to
remind them that buying and owning property is time-
consuming, expensive, and stressful.

17.  The impression you want to leave them with
is that of having their very own place in the
sun. An island paradise that’s theirs to return
to any time they want to. You don’t want
them leaving the building still musing over
any of the specific points of your sales pitch.
They need to be moved by the overall effect -
and the promise - of what you’ve offered
them. Sun on their backs, sand between their
toes, and a crystal-clear blue ocean
stretching out ahead of them.

18. SO HOW DOES THIS HELP ME CONCLUDE AN
ESSAY?
 OK, we get it. You’re not selling anybody a beach
getaway when you conclude an essay. But what the
above analogy describes is rhetoric. In an essay, you
are making a pitch. And the same principles as the
property sales example above apply.
 Your essay conclusion is your parting shot. It’s your
opportunity to leave your reader with a favorable
impression of the arguments you’ve just made. You
want them, at minimum, to be convinced that you’ve
achieved what you set out to achieve; that you’ve
proved your points. Better yet, you want them to feel
satisfied that you’ve taken them on an intellectual
journey that was interesting and rewarding.

19.  Best of all, though, is if you leave them with a
feeling of excitement. Excitement that your
essay promises a new way of thinking about
a topic, or a promising line of intellectual
inquiry. The scholarly equivalent of feeling
sand between their toes, in other words.

20. THANK YOU
 Voice Training and Research Institute
 No.135, First Main Road,
K.K Nagar, Madurai- 625020.
 E-mail: support@voiceskills.org
 Ph no: +91- 95970 82692 / 95970 84540
Web: https://voiceskills.org/