Page 34 - ENGLISH FOR CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

Writing Practice

The Structure of Paragraph

Understanding each part of a paragraph is an essential step to good writing. One way to do
this is to identify and colour-code each part.

Title – purple Topic sentence – dark red Supporting sentences – green

Supporting details – grey Concluding sentence – orange

When you colour code the parts, you know that:

You understand the paragraph organisation.

You are not missing any important components.

All the parts are in the right order.

The supporting details (grey) should be the longest and the most detailed

The United States Constitution

The US Constitution has three main branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial.
The executive branch comprises the President and Vice President, the legislative body is
represented by Congress, which is further divided into the House of Representatives and the
Senate, and the judicial branch comprises the highest court. The United States judicial
authority shall be vested in a single supreme court. The supreme court is subordinate to other
city and district courts. The Supreme Court can decide constitutional law issues
incontrovertibly through its judicial review power. Courts can declare governmental actions
unconstitutional through judicial review, preventing enforcement. These three branches work
together structurally to counteract any potential abuse of power by the other branches.

Paragraph Organization

A paragraph has four basic parts:

The Paragraph’s Title

The paragraph's title informs the reader about the content of the paragraph. Typically, it
expresses or suggests the subject of your writing.
A Topic Sentence

The topic sentence expresses the paragraph's main idea. It usually appears in the first
and most generic sentence of the paragraph. Two components are required for a strong topic
sentence, and one part is optional.

The topic of a paragraph;
The controlling idea—your attitude or opinion toward the topic; and
(Optional but preferred) predictors—the details you will elaborate on in the
paragraph's body.

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