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5. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAIN THOUGHT AND KEY

SENTENCE

You are familiar with the fact that the sentence containing the main thought is called the topie sentence or the key sentence. Let us think of it from now on as the key sentence, because it is really the key that unlocks the paragraph idea. The key sentence can sometimes be rather long, especially if it includes words and ideas that lend it interest. The main thought is always short. It retains only what is absolutely necessary to express the thought, and nothing else. Notę, for instance, the words in italics that can be omitted and the long expressions that can be shortened. What is left is the main thought.

MAJN THOUCHTS

Sport fans are realizing that a track meet can be as exciting as football.

The dairy industry uses machin-ery and skilled laber to inerease production.

St. Bernard dogs have a proud tradition to uphold.

KEY SENTENCES

a.    Sport fans are realizing morę and morę that a track meet can be as e.\citing to watch as a baseball or football gamę.

b.    Ali the way from farm to re-tailer, the dairy industry uses machin ery and skilled labor to inerease its production.

c.    The St. Bernard dogs that are still brecl in the Alps by the St.

Augustine friars have an old and proud tradition to uphold.

While you are reading a paragraph, it is naturally easier to think of a short main thought than of a long key sentence. There-fore you would do well to practice making that kind of abbreviated

sentence. _g p,_{NDING THE} KEY SENTENCE

When the key sentence is not the first one in the paragraph, it will take skill to recognize it. Making a great effort or reading the paragraph again morę carefully does not always work. Tliere is a way of doing it, a way that makes you surę you are ^correct and not merely making a guess.

Find the General Statement

Writers have no intention of making your reading morę difficult by hiding the key sentence from you. They generally place it wherever it can be most interesting, or where it will make the paragraph most effective. Efficient readers are never troubled about it. They recognize the main thought almost immediately. They often know what it is before they come to it. because they can tell early in the paragraph what to e.xpect.

How can the key sentence be recognized? You have studied one method— namely, looking for a generał statement. Let us ex-amine a sample paragraph and find the key sentence by this method.

Now read the complete paragraph to observe how the remain-ing sentences supply further details.

When he was only three years old, Mozart oould pick out melodies on a clavichord, and at five he was already begin-ning to compose. It was eoiclcnt that he was a prodigy and a musical genius. He learned to play the violin and organ without instruction. He published his first composition when he was seven. By the time he was a young man, he had played at concerts in most of Europes great cities.