Conclusion

The conclusion is the last part of your text. As such, if should represent its high point. Bear in mind that academics and businesspeople, hard pressed for time, often limit their reading of articles and reports to the very minimum: in making a preliminary assessment of the importance of a text, they may well take in no more that the title, something of the introduction, but in any case the conclusion, for it is in the conclusion that the relevance of the text for its readership is most powerfully enunciated. The purpose of this chapter is to offer some suggestions on how to write effective conclusions, conclusions that are formulated in such striking, forceful terms that they leave a lasting impression upon your reader.

We will claim that a conclusion should not represent a fresh start but rather should pick up on the internal dynamics of the preceding text and bring the argument further. We will also stress that it is generally insufficient for a conclusion merely to restate what has already emerged clearly from the body paragraphs. Another point will be that the conclusion, in some ways like the introduction, is an opportunity for the concluding paragraph, and thus the text as a whole, should end with a powerful, resonant last sentence, one which will stimulate the reader to further thought.

As a rule of thumb, we would suggest that the conclusion should represent about one-eighth of the entire text: this length will ensure (a) that there is sufficient room for all the functions performed by conclusions and (b) that the conclusion does not develop into an entity in its own right - it is a continuation of the text, never an independent digression. Thus, in a 1,000-word text, the conclusion should appear as a single paragraph, and should display the same tripartite structure as has been recommended for introductory and body paragraphs.