While students often ask for advice on essay writing, few of them know that what decides about the ultimate quality of their papers is the ability to construct coherent paragraphs. Well-structured paragraphs help to both organize and present all thoughts and arguments that are supposed to be comprised in an essay. They also lead the reader toward the conclusion in a logical order.
How to Construct Paragraphs?
In spite of the essay type in which they appear, all paragraphs should follow the same structural pattern. They begin with topic sentence which introduces main ideas of the whole paragraph. The following body paragraph contains arguments, examples, comparisons, etc. Terminator, the last sentence of a paragraph, serves as a conclusion to all the above. Alternatively, in longer essay forms terminator can be substituted by a transition sentence which marks the relation between following paragraphs.
How to Write the Topic Sentence
Topic sentence should be brief, clear and directly related to the paragraph content. It announces, yet in a neutral tone, what idea or problem is about to be discussed. It should give an idea of why a certain problem has to be considered in a given context. Moreover, topic sentences mustn’t be referenced or quoted from secondary sources.
How to Write the Body Paragraph
It consists of so-called detail sentences which describe and evaluate the problem mentioned in the introductory sentence.
- Content of the Body Paragraph: it’s composed of opinions, thoughts, arguments, quotations, etc. as well as obligatory commentaries on them. Unlike topic sentences or terminators, it can contain references, pictures, as well as contents in brackets.
- Composition of the Body Paragraph:
- Visual elements such as charts, graphs and pictures as well as quotations and referenced paraphrases are never situated immediately after the topic sentence or right before the terminator. There must be at least one sentence introducing them and one sentence commenting on them.
- Organization of sentences will vary according to essay type, but one rule holds for all – sentences should be of approximately the same length. They also shouldn’t be too long or overlapped with very short sentences either.
- Paragraphs should be of more or less the same length to ensure clean structure. It is advised to avoid too short paragraphs; on average no more than three paragraphs can be situated on one standard formatted page.
- The weight of referenced material shouldn’t outdo the author’s own opinions and remarks.
Closing sentences are not a summary of the paragraph but a restatement of its main ideas. In other words, terminator reflects on what was already presented in the body paragraph. Consequently, it will name conclusions rather than suddenly draw them. Transition sentences, in contrast to terminators, have the capacity to provide a short introduction to another paragraph explaining the order in which they were situated in an essay.
Well-written essay starts with well-written paragraphs. If the above guidelines are kept in mind, essay writing should be largely facilitated. For more ideas connected with writing interesting and well-built paragraphs visit this site.
Further reading: Elements of a Paragraph: Topic, Support, Transition, and Conclusion in Paragraphs
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