Page 26 - Perfect English Grammar: The Indispensable Guide to Excellent Writing and Speaking

In this section, we are concerned mainly with writing essays and similar formal
or quasi-formal documents read by authority figures such as teachers or bosses.

However, even in the most literary writing (as you can see in the examples near
the end of this section), the formal rules can still work very well.

A paragraph is the foundation of writing structure. In many ways, it mimics
the larger structure of a typical essay. Each paragraph contains one or more

sentences, which generally cover one subject.

In formal writing, there are three parts to a paragraph:

1. topic
2. body

3. conclusion

This is a general structure. Different kinds of writing can condense or stretch

this form from one sentence to a page of paragraphs.
Besides those three parts, paragraphs have two important characteristics:

1. They contain one main idea.
2. They have multiple sentences.

How do you know when to start a paragraph?

■ when introducing an essay or a new idea
■ ■ when concluding an essay or finishing the discussion of an idea when

an existing paragraph seems to contain too many ideas (in which

■ case, move each main idea into its own paragraph) when trying to
avoid a big unbroken block of words—or “wall of text”—which can be

intimidating Paragraphs can be any length, but good writers usually try to
break down long paragraphs into several shorter paragraphs.

No matter how long a paragraph is, it should have a reason to be there, and
have a job to do (a job that isn’t simply about making the writing longer, or

trying to impress the reader). Broken-out shorter paragraphs are stylistic, but

they can still contain discrete ideas. Just look carefully at your words and figure