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Paragraph Writing
Paragraph Writing
Paragraph Writing
But how do you know if you have crafted a good paragraph? It will have four
characteristics:
● Unity
● Order
● Coherence
● Completeness
You achieve these four characteristics through using the three parts of your paragraph
wisely and with forethought.
First Sentence
The first sentence in a paragraph is important, and it’s called the “topic sentence.” It
should represent the overall idea that governs the rest of the paragraph’s content. It’s the
same as your essay introduction leads into your essay. All the sentences that follow will
contribute to this topic sentence. For example, in this paragraph, I began by telling you
that the paragraph starts with a topic sentence. Now I am telling you what it is for, and
how it relates to the other sentences in the paragraph. If you do this well, you’ll achieve
the first of our characteristics: unity.
Contributing Sentences
Your contributing sentences must lead logically to the concluding one. This means you
need to present it in some kind of order. Will you choose chronological order, order of
importance, or relate each successive sentence to the other using logic? That depends on
what you are writing about, but your aim is to make your paragraph easy to follow from
point A to point B to point C. Finally, you want to tie all your points together to underline
the point you are trying to get across. Order helps to convey the sense of what you are
saying. If you confuse your reader, you have not written a clever paragraph.
Order Should Bring Coherence
Have you ever listened to someone talking, and it sounds like they’re just babbling and
not making any sense? They are speaking incoherently. When a person speaks
coherently, each thought follows neatly from the previous one, and it is easy to
understand what they are saying. Although it’s not a must, using transition words helps to
show how one thought relates to another. There are many such words and phrases which
include:
● Because
● In addition
● By contrast
● Next
● Afterward
● Accordingly
● No doubt
● Of course
● On the other hand
● Naturally
● Also
● After
● Before
Another important trick to remember is to keep all your sentences in the same verb tense.
It just makes it so much easier for your reader to follow your thoughts.
Don’t leave your reader wondering “So… what?” at the end of your paragraph. Pull your
threads together into a concluding sentence. It should support your introductory sentence
while acknowledging what you have discussed in the supporting sentences. This helps
your reader to see how the supporting information relates to the topic. You may think it is
obvious, but your reader may not!
Practice
Writing a really good paragraph is something of an art, but like any skill, you can learn it
through practice. That’s why teachers will set paragraph writing tasks for their
students. But if you love writing, or just want to improve your writing skills, there’s no
reason why you shouldn’t set yourself a few tasks. Choose from a list of
paragraph writing prompts, or make up a list of your own.
Remember, keep it to one paragraph! After you’ve written it, leave it for a while because
it’s hard to evaluate your own work right away. Later, go and look at your exercise. Ask
yourself:
Writing a paragraph isn’t all that difficult, but you can’t just run at it like a bull at a gate.
If you think things through, you’ll find yourself naturally falling in with the rules we’ve
discussed here. Thoughtful work is usually good work, so engage your grey matter and
get writing!