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A Sentence Is An Idea, A Paragraph Is Closely Related Ideas: 1,000 Words Paragraphs Easy Paragraphs
A Sentence Is An Idea, A Paragraph Is Closely Related Ideas: 1,000 Words Paragraphs Easy Paragraphs
Bear in mind that academic and essay writing usually means you’re writing for a
fairly dedicated reader, but what about the huge chunk of the population who are
frightened off by big chunks of text, even if they are only six or seven lines long
(depending on font)?
You can assume commercial writing and news reports will have paragraphs
approximately half as long as the ones you’d see in academic or essay writing. In
this case, we’re looking at ten to twenty paragraphs per 1,000 words instead of five
to ten.
Count ’em: two characters for the word, and three for the punctuation marks. To
begin with, you’d introduce or refer to your speakers, but once the conversation is
flowing nicely, you can start skipping them at times.
It’s a lot less cumbersome to skip a mention of the speaker than to add “said Mary”
and “John said” after every direct quote. So theoretically, you can have a paragraph
consisting of one word plus punctuation marks. 1,000 words in direct speech
would therefore mean you’d write way more than the five or ten paragraphs our
initial guideline suggested.
Does It Matter?
Not necessarily, but bear in mind that even teachers who are paid to read students’
writing get tired eyes. The easier it is to read and understand what you have
written, the more likely your teacher is to notice those clever details you included.
There’s also a distinct possibility they won’t start hating you while they read your
work. Yes, they’re supposed to be unbiased, but everyone is human!
When writing in other contexts: an article, a blog, or a book, keeping paragraphs
short helps to hold your reader’s attention. Yes, there are famous writers who just
wrote without much attention to paragraphs, or even punctuation, but their work
isn’t an easy read, and no matter how educated we may be, “easy” is invariably the
preferred option.
To take easy reading to the next level, try using sub-headers every paragraph to
three paragraphs. This is applicable to blogs and web pages, and to a certain extent,
in academic writing. When you hit a web page for info, what do you do? I look at
the header, and then I scan the sub-heads to get an idea of the writer’s approach to
the subject. If it looks like fluff, I kill the page and move on. But if the sub-headers
are interesting, and seem to tell me there’s something worth learning, I’ll read the
whole piece.
1 paragraph is 100 – 200 words for essays, 50 – 100 words for easy writing
2 paragraphs is 200 – 400 words for essays, 100 – 200 words for easy
writing
3 paragraphs is 300 – 600 words for essays, 150 – 300 words for easy
writing
4 paragraphs is 400 – 800 words for essays, 200 – 400 words for easy
writing
5 paragraphs is 500 – 1,000 words for essays, 250 – 500 words for easy
writing
6 paragraphs is 600 – 1,200 words for essays, 300 – 600 words for easy
writing
7 paragraphs is 700 – 1,400 words for essays, 350 – 700 words for easy
writing
8 paragraphs is 800 – 1,600 words for essays, 400 – 800 words for easy
writing
9 paragraphs is 900 – 1,800 words for essays, 450 – 900 words for easy
writing
10 paragraphs is 1,000 – 2,000 words for essays, 500 – 1,000 words for easy
writing
15 paragraphs is 1,500 – 3,000 words for essays, 750 – 1,500 words for easy
writing
20 paragraphs is 2,000 – 4,000 words for essays, 1,000 – 2,000 words for
easy writing
25 paragraphs is 2,500 – 5,000 words for essays, 1,250 – 2,500 words for
easy writing
50 paragraphs is 5,000 – 10,000 words for essays, 2,500 – 5,000 words for
easy writing
100 paragraphs is 10,0