Welcome to this topic entitled Paragraph writing! Paragraph writing is the foundation of all essay writing, whether the form is expository, persuasive, narrative, or creative. In order to write a good paragraph, students need to understand the essential elements of paragraph writing and how each element contributes to the whole. As future professionals, you need to equip yourself with the necessary knowledge and skills to come up with effective paragraphs. So, what are you waiting for, grab that pen and paper and enjoy learning online!
“Write everyday even if it’s just a paragraph.” ~ Michael Connelly
Why do we need effective paragraph writing?
If you were drawing a map to show a fellow traveler how to get from a mountain pass to a source of water, you would be careful to draw a line that followed the trail down the mountain, along the valley to a spot where there was a lake. You wouldn’t stop the line halfway down the mountain, hoping that those who used your map would be able to figure out the rest of the way for themselves.
Similarly, when you are writing a paragraph, you must be sure to trace the full development of your ideas for readers so they will understand the assumptions, evidence and reasoning you used. There are three ways to ensure that your paragraphs are fully developed: by providing the right level of supporting detail, choosing the right kind of evidence and choosing the right pattern of development for your purpose.
Paragraph writing approaches
Effective paragraphs are not only unified, they are also fully developed, which means that they don’t leave any significant questions in readers’ minds. If a question lingers in the minds of the reader and the answer can not be found in the succeeding paragraph/s, you have not written an effective paragraph.
Now, here are some approaches you may use in your paragraph writing.
- Paragraph Writing by Narration
- Paragraph Writing by Description
- Paragraph Writing by Process
- Paragraph Writing by Exemplification
- Paragraph Writing by Comparison/Contrast
- Paragraph Writing by Definition
- Paragraph Writing by Cause and Effect
Paragraph writing by Narration
Since narrative paragraphs often focus on an experience or an event, they share features with both process and descriptive styles of development. Like process paragraphs (described below), narrative uses transitions of time and space; like descriptive paragraphs, this pattern can use sensory words to develop ideas and be structured with the topic sentence near or at the end of the paragraph. The unique feature of this type of development is that it tells a story.
Examine this example:
Although we were close, Samantha managed to hide her problem throughout Grade 11. I remember her saying that she had to watch what she ate to maintain her figure, but that wasn’t unusual; almost everyone we knew was constantly on a diet, so when she’d bring only a piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato for lunch, I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t find it unusual either that she spent a lot of time in the girl’s washroom that year. Like any good friend, I accepted her explanation that she had picked up a flu that she couldn’t shake. It wasn’t until the beginning of Grade 12 that I began to suspect that something more serious might be wrong. I noticed that she looked more gaunt each week, and she complained of feeling weak and tired all the time. Even more disturbing, though, was the way she made excuses not to walk home with Kath and me. Eventually, she even stopped meeting us for lunch at Wu’s Cafe. At first, I thought maybe she was on something, but when I stole peeks into her locker and her big saddle-bag purse, I never saw anything suspicious. Then, one day, we were in the girl’s room, repairing our lipstick and I asked her, straight out what the problem was. She leaned on the sink with both hands, and hung her head, until her blonde hair shielded her face, and in a shaky voice she told all: the uncontrollable urges to eat anything, and the vomiting that always followed. With that simple statement, the wall of secrets Samantha had built between us over last year collapsed and once again, we were friends. (adapted from a student essay with permission.)
Even though this paragraph does not start with a formal topic sentence, it is not difficult to find the theme—it’s in the last sentence, which is a common pattern in narration. Notice, too, how events are organized according to time. The first sentence establishes the time frame of the story (during Grade 11), and traces some of the events during that year with use of past tense (we were close; everyone we knew, etc.) Then, the rest of the paragraph details events in chronological order. Transitions of time (eventually, then, as soon as) and sensory words (gaunt, blonde, shaky) help readers follow and visualize the events that form the backbone of this story.
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Paragraph Writing by Description
A descriptive pattern is characterized by vivid sensory description. It uses sense words (e.g., bitter, light, bright, pungent, loud) vivid action verbs, (e.g., dive, drip, rip) and transitions of space (e.g. here, there, to the left, up) to give sense impressions of a scene. This pattern is useful when you want to create a dominant sensory impression. In most academic work, you should use this arrangement with caution: many academic papers call for analysis and synthesis, and although description can contribute to that type of development, use it sparingly to make room for more analytical paragraphs. Note that some instructors do not use the word description in this specialized way but in a more general sense to mean “paraphrase” or “define.” Thus, whenever your instructor asks you to “describe” or use description in your essay, it’s a good idea to check to see what she means by description.
Sample 1. The sample below is an opening paragraph from a student essay on the development of entertainment media. In it, she describes TV watching in her family to make a point about how central TV was as a form of entertainment in the 60’s.
As I was growing up in the 60’s, television was the only entertainment my family knew of the electronic sort. The 7 o’clock nightly news was such an important part of our family that my dad knocked a wall down and built a huge cabinet in its place just to accommodate our 19-inch black and white. No one was allowed to talk or make a sound when the television was on; all eyes were glued to the moving and flickering image. The box commanded absolute respect. In the daytime, “the television needs its rest” my mother would say, as she patted its pseudo-wooden top and covered it with a doilie she had made herself. There is no doubt that TV was as central to our lives as it was to the lives of all our friends during that period. (adapted from an essay by Angeline Chan, used with permission.)
The trail, perching precariously 500 feet above the roaring surf and then dipping effortlessly into dark lush valleys, snakes its way along the fluted coastline. From a distance, it is hard to believe there would be any way to traverse the cliffs that dip like fingers into the frothing Pacific. The first half of the trail is densely overgrown, and the air is dripping with the aroma of over ripe guava. Waterfalls and streams cascade unceasingly down along the trail from Mount Waialeale, the wettest spot on earth. Vegetation grows thickly on the near vertical slopes above and below the trail, lending a sense of false security to the path, which at its widest measures ten feet across. The landscape on the second half of the trail, the leeward side, changes dramatically from jungle to semi-arid desert. Now , the cliffs are bare rock, and a three-foot wide ledge is all that protects the wary hiker from the black shoreline below. Nevertheless, the white sand beach that marks the end of the trail is more than ample reward for the dangers survived. The colors of this last valley, the Kalalau Valley, are a vivid red and green against a cloudless blue sky. This, however, is not the end of the trip. The only trail out is the trail in. Not for the faint of heart, the Kalalua Trail on Kauai’s north shore is eleven miles of rugged adventure. (from an essay by Noreen Edgar, used with permission)
Paragraph Writing by Process
A process arrangement is usually used to explain a process or how to do something. It uses transitions of enumeration(e.g., first, second, third) and/or transitions of time(e.g., then, next, finally) and is the right pattern of development when your purpose is to help your readers understand the steps in a process or procedure or to give instructions. For full development, a process paragraph relies on clear communication of the instruction or steps to your readers.
Here is an example:
The writing process has four distinct phases. The first is invention, which is aided by any number of techniques, including free-writing, mind-mapping and outlining. In this first stage, it’s important for a writer not to edit but to let ideas flow and to simply get them down on paper. After invention, comes the first draft—the stage where the ideas start to take shape. Many writers use a sentence outline at this stage to see where they need to cut and where they need to add material. The first draft is also where writers should develop a tentative thesis to guide the structure of their essay. The next stage of the process is when both the second and third drafts are done. Here, ideas and structure are refined, and the thesis is revised until it becomes the unifying idea of the paper. Finally, comes the last stage, that of editing. Writers should take care at this stage that all sentence structure and punctuation is correct, and they should make corrections to documentation format as needed. Writers often repeat these four phases more than once, or skip a phase and go back to it, making the writing process more cyclical than linear.
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Paragraph Writing by Exemplification
This pattern uses examples(or one longer, extended examples) to support the topic sentence and is useful when your most convincing support is a number of pertinent examples. With this pattern, you provide proof of a more general statement (the topic sentence) with the weight of the specific instances (supporting details).
The subordinate image of women is suggested in this passage by the way they are treated and addressed by the male characters. The language Falstaff uses in addressing the hostess of the tavern , for example, echoes the treatment of women in other parts of the play. In this passage, instead of apologizing to the hostess for his rudeness towards her, Falstaff says that he “forgives” (3.3.176) her and orders her with commands. In addition, the brusqueness of his manner is accentuated by short, terse phrases — “go make ready,” “love thy husband,” “look to thy servants,” “cherish thy guests” and “be gone” (3.3.176-180). This disrespectful treatment of women is echoed as well in Hotspur’s behavior towards his wife, Kate, when he says to her, “I love thee not; I care not for thee, Kate” (2.3.90-91) and when he expresses his distrust of her simply because she is a woman (2.3.107-111). Still another woman in the play, Lady Mortimer, experiences the same treatment when she is referred to as “a peevish self-willed harlotry” (3.1.198) by her father, Owen Glendower. Overall, the men in this passage speak of and to the women in ways that suggest women must submit to disrespectful and dominating behavior by men. (Adapted from an essay by Angeline Chan, used with permission.)
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Paragraph Writing by Comparison/Contrast
This pattern of development is useful when you want to help readers understand a concept by pointing out similarities and differences between it and another concept. The comparison is usually developed either by analyzing all features of one concept and then comparing them to the features of the other (a block comparison method) or by analyzing each point of comparison (a point-by-point method). Keep in mind that the comparison is simply a means to an end and that the conclusion of the paragraph should be drawn from your comparison.
In morning report, the nursing students were always obvious, even to the casual observer. Their uniforms marked them, of course. Unlike the grads in their crisp, white cotton dresses and caps, all the students were dressed in robin’s-egg blue polyester tops and skirts. Their shoes, too, were a dead give-away. While the old-timers wore scuffed, white duty shoes, broken down by miles of walking the hospital corridors, the students’ shoes were pristine, freshly polished before each shift in case of a snap inspection by the surgical instructor. The most telling detail, however, was the way the students all perched around the edges of the room on stools, leaving the chairs around the conference table for the regular staff. No one had ever explicitly told them that they couldn’t sit at the table; no one had to. They just automatically took their places on the periphery, giving deference to the nurses who worked on the unit. No one had to tell them either, that while the regular staff could talk during report, they could not. Each morning, as the night-duty nurse read report, the regular staff laughed and joked about the patients and each other, but the students, not daring so much as a peep, leaned in, waiting to catch each crumb of information about the patients entrusted to them that day. In those days, neither staff nor instructors ever left a first year student nurse with any doubt about the position she held in the hierarchy.
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Paragraph Writing by Definition
A paragraph of definition aims to give a complete, working definition of a term, concept or idea in your paper. One of the central features of this pattern is that it tells both what the term is and what it isn’t, that is, it defines the boundaries of a term so your readers can better understand it. This pattern is useful when you are introducing new or specialized terms to your readers, or when you need to define a key concept in your thesis.
In nursing research, paradigms are essential to help to place the research in to a broader context. According to Polit and Hungler (1997), paradigms constitute a worldview or a general perspective on the complexities of the real world. More specifically, paradigms for human inquiry are often characterized in terms of the way in which they respond to basic philosophical questions (p.11). In this sense of the term, then, paradigms are more than typical examples or models. Rather, they demonstrate relationships between ideas and provide a basis for a methodology or a theory, and as such, they are useful as lenses for viewing and interpreting significant, substantive issues to the discipline. Thus, paradigms that are often used for nursing research, such as empiricist, interpretive and critical social paradigms, provide frames that hold the vocabulary, theories, principles, presuppositions and values related to an inquiry. (Adapted from an essay by Mary Ratsensperger, used with permission.)
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Paragraph Writing by Cause and Effect
Cause and effect paragraphs analyze the causes or the effects of something or the relationship between both. If you want to explain the “why” of something—a process, an event, a concept—then this is a useful pattern. In this pattern, transitions of logic (e.g., thus, therefore, consequently, as a result) and words and phrases of cause and effect (e.g., because, for the reason that, given that, in effect) feature prominently. Be careful, however, when you make statements about cause and effect. If there is more than one cause to a particular effect, be sure not to restrict your analysis or explanation. On the other hand, if there is more than one effect, be sure not to assume they all arose from the same cause. To be sure there is a connection between the causes and effects you are analyzing or explaining, ask questions like “Is this the only thing that could cause this effect?” and “Is this the only possible effect this cause could have?” and “Was this cause sufficient to result in this effect?” (Horner, 1988, p.127).
This paragraph is taken from a student essay on the causes of the French Revolution:
While there were many contributing factors to the French Revolution, a primary cause was a financial crisis brought on by royal extravagance. For years before the revolution finally exploded in 1789, the royal government had been borrowing heavily to cover deficit spending. (Cobb, 1988.) Even though France’s high courts of appeal cautioned against such borrowing, the royal’s extravagance continued, eventually resulting in a financial crisis that required the government to institute a series of taxes. As the press highlighted the government’s spending with cartoons and stories, the peasants, already burdened by high taxes, low wages and poor harvests, began to resent the demands of the royals. Finally, in 1789, the Third Estate—the common people—became so enraged, they demanded a new constitution and refused to compromise with the existing government until it was written. This demand set off the first sparks of revolution.
Paragraph writing Length
You might be wondering, “how do I know when to start a new paragraph?” or “how long should a paragraph be?” Usually, these questions are related to how well paragraphs are developed and unified, and essentially, there is no one, right answer. In extreme cases, you might find a paragraph as short as one sentence or as long as a page if it achieves the writer’s purpose. However, most paragraphs fall somewhere between these two extremes, and while there are no hard and fast rules, there are a few principles you can use to determine proper paragraph length:
- The paragraph should be long enough to fully develop your topic.
- The paragraph should focus on one topic only.
- The paragraph length should support the effect you are trying to create. Keep in mind that longer paragraphs slow readers down and shorter paragraphs are easier and quicker to read.
- A paragraph of over 12 sentences in an academic essay probably needs to be divided.
- A paragraph of 5 or fewer sentences in an academic essay probably needs to be developed further or combined with another paragraph.
- Paragraph length can vary greatly from discipline to discipline.
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Works cited
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Writing Centre. (n.d.) Paragraph Writing. Writing Centre Learning Guide. A PDF online document accessed on August 5, 2017 at www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/
- McCloud-Bondoc, Linda. (n.d). Writing effective paragraphs. A PDF online document accessed on August 5, 2017 at http://write-site.athabascau.ca/documentation/Sample%20of%20a%20paragraph%20developed%20by%20cause%20and%20effect.pdf
- Brundage, D., & Lahey, M. (2004). Acting on words: An integrated reader, rhetoric and handbook. Toronto, ON: Pearson Education Canada.
- Brundage, D. & Lahey, M. (2007). Acting on words: An integrated rhetoric, reader, and handbook. 2nd Edition, in press. Toronto: Pearson,.
- Horner, W. B. (1988). Rhetoric in the classical tradition. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, Inc.
- Lundsford, A. & Connors, R. (1989). The St. Martin’s handbook. Annotated instructor’s ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
- Messenger, W. E. & De Bruyn, J. (1986). The Canadian writer’s handbook. 2nd Edition. Scarborough, ON: Prentice-Hall Canada, Inc.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to all the students who generously allowed their writing to be used as samples in this resource. Also, many thanks to David Brundage, Adien Dubbelboer, Melanie Klingbeil, Karen Overbye and Tunde Tuzes for their advice and contributions.