Paragraph Writing

Crafting Paragraphs
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Relevant Paragraphs (1 of 2)
Each paragraph should be an essential element of
the whole writing project.
To be essential, each paragraph

should be . . .
• Unified
• Relevant
• Well developed
• Coherent
• Connected to those
• Interesting
that precede and follow
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© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education.
Relevant Paragraphs (2 of 2)
. . . add to the audience’s understanding of the
thesis.
Jump to long description

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Unified Paragraphs
. . . focus on a single main idea.

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Coherent Paragraphs (1 of 3)
. . . make the relationship between sentences in

the paragraph clear.
This can be achieved by including transitions between sentences:

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. . . make the relationship between sentences in

the paragraph clear.
This can be achieved by including transitions between sentences:
For a list of transitional words and phrases classified

by function, refer to the Quick Reference box on
page 30.
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. . . make the relationship between sentences

in the paragraph clear.
This can be achieved by repeating key words and sentence
structures judiciously:

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Well-developed Paragraphs (1 of 10)
. . . offer enough support to satisfy readers.

There are no hard and fast rules about how
much evidence is enough, but you should
supply as much as needed to explain your
ideas fully.
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. . . offer enough support to satisfy readers.

Compare this paragraph . . .

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. . . with this one:

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1. Patterns of organization include

comparison-contrast.
Comparison-contrast paragraphs point out

similarities or differences.
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description.
Descriptive paragraphs include details that

appeal to the senses.
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3. Patterns of organization include narration.
Narration tells a
story or
describes a
process that
unrolls over
time.

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exemplification.
Exemplification
works by
providing
examples to
make a
general point
more
specific.
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5. Patterns of organization include cause-and-effect

sequencing.
Cause-and-effect paragraphs explain why something
happened or what its consequences are.

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6. Patterns of organization include analysis.

Analysis breaks a larger topic or idea into its
component parts.

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7. Patterns of organization include definition.

Definitions explain
the meaning of
a word or idea
by placing it in
its class and
providing its
distinguishing
characteristics.

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Introductory Paragraphs (1 of 2)
• Set the tone for the rest of the paper

• Convey your stance toward your topic
• Establish the purpose
• Identify your thesis
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Introductory Paragraphs (2 of 2)
There are several strategies for a solid introduction:
• Start with a quotation

• Tell a relevant anecdote
• Define a key term
• Offer some background information
• Set up a common belief and challenge it
• Explain the theme the paper will explore
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Concluding Paragraphs (1 of 2)
• Provide closure for the reader

• Are likely what readers will remember most
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Concluding Paragraphs (2 of 2)
Choose from among several strategies for a strong

conclusion:
• Refer back to the material in the introduction
• Summarize the main points
• Discuss how facts in the paper changed your way of thinking
• Suggest a possible solution (or solutions)
• Explain further research that is needed
• Leave the reader with something vivid to consider
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Connecting Paragraphs
Readers need to see how paragraphs connect to each
other—how they flow throughout the text.
This can be achieved through some of the same

techniques provided earlier:
• Transitions
• Repetition
• Pronouns, synonyms, and equivalent expressions
• Parallel sentence structure
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Appendix for Long Description
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Relevant Paragraphs (2 of 2) Long
Description
[Student Example Paragraph]
[Topic Sentence]
Second, by calling hip-hop a “lethal genre,” Staples places it into a category separate from other works of art that are not as “virulent.”
[Example 1]
Yes, many hip-hop lyrics are violent, but that does not distinguish these songs from many other artistic works.
[Concession and rebuttal]
Edgar Allan Poe, considered one of America’s greatest writers, wrote numerous stories about murder and death, including “The Tell-
Tale Heart,” whose narrator is a confessed killer.
[Example 2]
The Talented Mr. Ripley, a novel by Patricia Highsmith, and the movie based on this novel, make Tom Ripley, an unrepentant
murderer, a sympathetic character.
[Example 3]
Sculptor Kiki Smith depicts mutilated or deformed bodies in her art (see Figure 1), and, instead of being criticized, she is considered
one of today’s most important sculptors. No one would claim, I think, that Kiki Smith influences her viewers to commit mayhem.
[Concluding sentence, which also recalls thesis]
Clearly, hip-hop artists are not alone in depicting horrible people and events; they should not be singled out for doing so, and it should
not be assumed that their audience will blindly follow suit.
—Alea Wratten, SUNY–Geneseo, “Reflecting on Brant Staples’s Editorial ’How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed Its Fans’”
[Margin Annotation]
Thesis: . . . [Staples’s] argument fails to be persuasive for several reasons: He doesn’t account for the influence that positive role
models have, he ignores the fact that art frequently depicts violence without dire consequences to its consumers, and he overlooks the
broad spectrum of hip-hop to focus on only a single strand.
Jump to image
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Unified Paragraphs Long Description
[Student Example Paragraph]
[Topic Sentence]
Last summer, I traveled to Costa Rica to work on an organic farm.
[Relevant]
I had always wanted to experience Central America, and this was a perfect opportunity to truly get to know
the land.
[Irrelevant]
Thailand and Cambodia also fascinate me.
[Relevant]
I worked eight hours each day on the farm, helping to care for the animals and learning how to raise
organic vegetables. After a day outside, I would help my host family prepare dinner, with food fresh from
the land.
[Irrelevant]
Breakfast is actually my favorite meal because I like to eat eggs and hash browns.
[Relevant]
As I ate, I knew that I had played a part in the food I was eating. Though I stayed in Costa Rica only for the
summer, I came back with much higher expectations for my food.
[Irrelevant]
I think I’m going to go back to Costa Rica next summer to work with a nonprofit to build houses in San
Jose.
Jump to image
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Coherent Paragraphs (1 of 3) Long
Description
[Example Paragraph]
Baron’s book, which is written in the relentlessly melodramatic style of Jaws, describes
cougars spreading inexorably eastward.
[Contrast] By contrast, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, in The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their
Culture, argues that cougars were never fully exterminated in the East and instead survived
in remote areas by being especially stealthy around humans. The difference is significant.
[Cause-effect]
If you accept Marshall Thomas’s argument, then the Eastern Seaboard sounds a great deal
like pre–cougar-resurgence Colorado.
[Emphasis]
Indeed, the herds of deer plaguing the unbroken strip of Eastern suburbs makes a replay of
the Boulder situation likely—but on a far larger scale.
[Time]
Already, bears and coyotes are invading the Eastern suburbs. Can cougars and wolves be
far behind?
—Peter Canby, “The Cat Came Back,” Harper’s
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Coherent Paragraphs (3 of 3) Long
Description
[Example Paragraph]
The first law of gossip is that you never know how many people are talking about
you behind your back. The second law is thank God. The third—and most
important—law is that as gossip spreads from friends to acquaintances to people
you’ve never met, it grows more garbled, vivid, and definitive. Out of stray factoids
and hesitant impressions emerges a hard mass of what everyone knows to be
true. Imagination supplies the missing pieces, and repetition turns these pieces
into facts; gossip achieves its shape and amplitude only in the continual retelling.
The best stories about us are told by perfect strangers.
—Tad Friend, “The Harriet-the-Spy Club,” The New Yorker
[Margin Annotations]
Repeated structures include “The first law is,” “the second law is,” and “the third
law is.” “Gossip” is a key word that is used twice. Pronouns include the words “it”
and “its,” referring to gossip. Equivalent expressions are “a hard mass of what
everyone knows to be true” and “best stories about us.”
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Well-developed Paragraphs (2 of 10) Long
Description
[Example paragraph where the first sentence is the topic

sentence]
One of the most important . . . features of American life in
the late twentieth century was the aging of the American
population. After decades of steady growth, the nation’s
birth rate began to decline in the 1970s and remained low
through the 1980s and 1990s. In 1970, there were 18.4
births for every 1,000 people in the population. By 1996, the
rate had dropped to 14.8 births.
Jump to image
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Description
[Example Paragraph]
[Topic Sentence]
One of the most important . . . features of American life in the late twentieth century was the
aging of the American population.
[Compares birth rates]
After decades of steady growth, the nation’s birth rate began to decline in the 1970s and
remained low through the 1980s and 1990s. In 1970, there were 18.4 births for every 1,000
people in the population. By 1996, the rate had dropped to 14.8 births.
[Compares life expectancies]
The declining birth rate and a significant rise in life expectancy produced a substantial
increase in the proportion of elderly citizens. Almost 13 percent of the population was more
than sixty-five years old in 2000, as compared with 8 percent in 1970.
[Compares median ages]
The median age in 2000 was 35.3, the highest in the nation’s history. In 1970, it was 28.0.
—Alan Brinkley, American History: A Survey
Jump to image
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Description
[Example paragraph]
[Topic Sentence]
Europeans interpreted the simplicity of Indian dress in two different ways.
[First item of comparison]
Some saw the lack of clothing as evidence of “barbarism.” André Thevet, a
shocked
French visitor to Brazil in 1557, voiced this point of view when he attributed
nakedness to simple lust. If the Indians could weave hammocks, he sniffed, why
not shirts?
[Second item of comparison]
But other Europeans viewed unashamed nakedness as the Indians’ badge of
innocence. As remnants of a bygone “golden age,” they believed, Indians
needed clothing no more than government, laws, regular employment, or other
corruptions of civilization.
—James West Davidson et al., Nation of Nations, 5th edition
Jump to image
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Description
[Example paragraph of sensory descriptions]
A few moments later French announces, “Bottom contact on sonar.” The
seafloor rolls out like a soft, beige carpet. Robison points to tiny purple jellies
floating just above the floor. Beyond them, lying on the floor itself, are several
bumpy sea cucumbers, sea stars with skinny legs, pink anemones, and tube
worms, which quickly retract their feathery feeding arms at Tiburon’s approach.
A single rattail fish hangs inches above the bottom, shoving its snout into the
sediments in search of a meal.
—Virginia Morell, “OK, There It Is—Our Mystery Mollusk,” National Geographic
[Margin annotation]
Indications of place or location include “floating just above the floor. Beyond
them, lying on the floor itself”; “at Tiburon’s approach”; and “hangs inches above
the bottom.”
Jump to image
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Description
[Example Paragraph]
The very first trick ever performed by Houdini on the professional stage was a simple but effective illusion known
generally as the “Substitution Trunk,” though he preferred to call it “Metamorphosis.”
[Step 1]
Houdini and his partner would bring a large trunk onto the stage. It was opened and a sack or bag produced from
inside it.
[Step 2]
Houdini, bound and handcuffed, would get into the sack, which was then sealed or tied around the neck.
[Step 3]
The trunk was closed over the bag and its occupant. It was locked, strapped, and chained.
[Step 4]
Then a screen was drawn around it.
[Step 5]
The partner (after they married, this was always Mrs. Houdini) stepped behind the screen which, next moment, was
thrown aside—by Houdini himself. The partner had meanwhile disappeared.
[Step 6]
A committee of the audience was called onstage to verify that the ties, straps, etc. around the trunk had not been
tampered with.
[Step 7]
These were then laboriously loosened; the trunk was opened and there, inside the securely fastened bag, was—Mrs.
Houdini!
Jump to image
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Description
[Example paragraph]
For many years I believed that women had only one thing to learn from men: how to get
the attention of a waiter by some means short of kicking over the table and shrieking.
Never in my life have I gotten the attention of a waiter, unless it was an off-duty waiter
whose car I’d accidentally scraped in a parking lot somewhere. Men, however, can
summon a maître d’ just by thinking the word “coffee,” and this is a power women would
be well-advised to study. What else would we possibly want to learn from them?
[Example 1]
How to interrupt someone in midsentence as if you were performing an act of
conversational euthanasia?
[Example 2]
How to drop a pair of socks three feet from an open hamper and keep right on walking?
[Example 3]
How to make those weird guttural gargling sounds in the bathroom?
—Barbara Ehrenreich, “What I’ve Learned from Men: Lessons for a Full-Grown
Feminist,” Ms.
Jump to image
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Description
[Example paragraph]
Here is a modest suggestion for what Twitter can do to fix one of the problems that most
annoy me and I imagine many other users: the problem of crackpot, abusive tweets. The
paradox of Twitter is that the more followers you have (I currently have over 20,000), the
more abusive tweets you are likely to get calling you various scatological names or
passing along insane conspiracy theories. Some of this is bearable, but after a while you
want to take a hot bath and never go back into the cesspool again. I’m not suggesting
that these offensive tweets comprise the bulk of what’s on Twitter—far from it. I would
have stopped using it long ago if that were true. But it’s more of a chore than it should be
to find the good stuff in your feed among all the abusive attacks that are out there.
—Max Boot, “Abusing Anonymity,” Commentary
“The more followers you have” is the cause” and the effects are “the more abusive
tweets you are likely to get calling you various scatological names or passing along
insane conspiracy theories” and “after a while you want to take a hot bath and never go
back into the cesspool again.”
Jump to image
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Description
[Example paragraph]
The central United States is divided into two geographical zones: the Great Plains in the west and the
prairie in the east. Though both are more or less flat, the Great Plains—extending south from eastern
Montana and western North Dakota to eastern New Mexico and western Texas—are the drier of the
two regions and are distinguished by short grasses, while the more populous prairie to the east
(surrounding Omaha, St. Louis, and Fort Leavenworth) is tall-grass country. The Great Plains are the
“West”; the prairie, the “Midwest.”
—Robert D. Kaplan, An Empire of Wilderness
[Margin annotations]
“The central United States” is mentioned as the first part. “The Great Plains” are the second part and
are later described as “the Great Plains—extending south from eastern Montana and western North
Dakota to eastern New Mexico and western Texas—are the drier of the two regions and are
distinguished by short grasses.” The Great Plains are also described later as “The Great Plains are
the ‘West.’” The prairie is mentioned third and later described as “the more populous prairie to the
east (surrounding Omaha, St. Louis, and Fort Leavenworth) is tall-grass country.” It’s also later
described as the “Midwest.”
Jump to image
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Long Description
[Example Paragraph]
The international movement known as theater of the absurd so vividly captured the anguish of modern
society that late twentieth-century critics called it “the true theater of our time.” Abandoning classical
theater from Sophocles and Shakespeare through Ibsen and Miller, absurdist playwrights rejected
traditional dramatic structure (in which action moves from conflict to resolution), along with traditional
modes of character development. The absurdist play, which drew stylistic inspiration from dada
performance art and surrealist film, usually lacks dramatic progression, direction, and resolution. Its
characters undergo little or no change, dialogue contradicts actions, and events follow no logical order.
Dramatic action, leavened with gallows humor, may consist of irrational and grotesque situations that
remain unresolved at the end of the performance—as is often the case in real life.
—Gloria Fiero, The Humanistic Tradition, 5th edition
“Theater of the absurd” is the term to be defined. “Theater” is the class. Distinguishing characteristics
include the following quotes: “rejected traditional dramatic structure (in which action moves from
conflict to resolution), along with traditional modes of character development”; “lacks dramatic
progression, direction, and resolution. Its characters undergo little or no change, dialogue contradicts
actions, and events follow no logical order. Dramatic action”; and “may consist of irrational and
grotesque situations that remain unresolved at the end of the performance.”
Jump to image
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Paragraph Writing

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Crafting Paragraphs

To be essential, each paragraph

Jump to long description

. . . focus on a single main idea.

Jump to long description

. . . make the relationship between sentences in

Jump to long description

. . . make the relationship between sentences in

For a list of transitional words and phrases classified

. . . make the relationship between sentences

Jump to long description

. . . offer enough support to satisfy readers.

. . . offer enough support to satisfy readers.

Jump to long description

. . . with this one:

Jump to long description

1. Patterns of organization include

Comparison-contrast paragraphs point out

2. Patterns of organization include

Descriptive paragraphs include details that

3. Patterns of organization include narration.

Jump to long description

4. Patterns of organization include

5. Patterns of organization include cause-and-effect

Jump to long description

6. Patterns of organization include analysis.

Jump to long description

7. Patterns of organization include definition.

Jump to long description

• Set the tone for the rest of the paper

There are several strategies for a solid introduction:

• Start with a quotation

• Provide closure for the reader

Choose from among several strategies for a strong

This can be achieved through some of the same

[Example paragraph where the first sentence is the topic

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