1. Opening Doors: Chapter 5 Formulating Implied Main Ideas

2. Implied Main Ideas Every paragraph has a main idea, but not every paragraph has a stated main idea. When an author gives you information about a main point, but does not state it directly, the main idea is implied. You, the reader, must infer the main idea and formulate a sentence that expresses it.

3. Inferring the Main Idea Sometimes you can take an existing sentence in a paragraph and add information to it to formulate the implied main idea. Sometimes you have to combine information from two or more sentences in order to formulate the implied main idea. Other times you will have to create a completely original general sentence on your own that sums up the main idea.

4. Why take the time to formulate Implied Main Ideas? Doing so increases your understanding of the reading. College instructors are going to assume you know how to do this; they often base test questions off of implied main ideas.

5. Formulating Implied Main Ideas Step 1: After you read the paragraph, determine the topic. Ask yourself, “What is this paragraph about?”. Step 2: Determine the main idea. Ask yourself, “What is the single most important point the author wants me to infer about the topic?”. Step 3: Formulate a main idea sentence