The phrase "a guiding theme" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a central idea or principle that directs or influences a discussion, project, or piece of writing.
Example: "The novel explores the complexities of human relationships, with love as a guiding theme throughout the narrative."
Alternatives: "a central motif" or "a leading principle."
Those words, spoken by Coumba's mother, encapsulate a guiding theme of the 24th edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center through June 23 at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center.
Each edition of the show features a large group of artworks selected by the director -- and by guest curators, a group Mr. Bonami has expanded this year -- and arranged around a guiding theme.
To ensure some sort of cohesion to the show, there is always a guiding theme, this time it is "empty".
A common guiding theme in his writings is the stubborn resistance of heroes to their political or social tormentors.
But through the staccato grooves of press conference and midfield hackwork alike, he's remained above all grounded, and pragmatic – the perfect captain, in that sense, for a campaign whose guiding theme has always been the firm anchorage of reasonably downbeat expectations.
It is now an object of conscious defense and nostalgia — the guiding theme in an ideology of loss.
Ms. Boyle's experience living downtown in the months after 9/11 became the guiding theme of a collection of essays she published in December 2001, "A Mother's Essays from Ground Zero".
Expected benefits of a responsibly planned introduction of GM crops are outlined as a prospective example for the guiding theme "Biotechnology for sustainability of human society".
On Monday we provided an overview for how the unit works, including the guiding theme, goals, essential questions, projects and Common Core standards addressed.
And the guiding theme -- that China, far from being a pure, monolithic source from which peripheral cultures drew, took from the larger world at least as much as it gave -- has everything to say to our own multicultural time.
That vulnerability seems to be the guiding theme of this 69-year-old French director's work nowadays.
