A paragraph is a visual cue for readers. The indentation at the beginning, like the capital letter at the start of a sentence, signals your reader that a new thought unit is about to begin. Just as sentences gather words and phrases into units of meaning, these sentences are gathered into paragraphs. The paragraphs, in turn, may be gathered into major subdivisions. Therefore, it’s good to give some thought to paragraphing as you consider overall organizational design. Let your paragraph divisions point up your organization. For further reading about the philosophy of paragraphs, see The Elements of Style, pages 15-17. [1]
I. How Many?
Since paragraphs help readers see important thought units, a general guideline would be to start a new paragraph whenever you begin writing about a new organizational topic. But this won’t always work. In practice, you may find that two or three minor points can be treated in a single paragraph, or you may discover that what at first looked like a single sub-point is growing so big that it needs to be broken up.
Even so, if you remember that paragraphs cue your readers to important thought units below the level of your lowest subheading, yet above the level of the sentence, you’ll have a good basis for deciding how many paragraphs you need.
II. How Long?
Because paragraphs are visual groupings, you also need to consider what your reader will actually see on the page. Longer paragraphs slow the tempo, asking readers to bear down and concentrate while a complex issue is discussed. A series of short paragraphs picks up the tempo and invites readers to browse or skim lightly.
A single, unbroken page of text appears under-differentiated. Readers may wonder what the point is and why they can’t find it. A whole page of single sentence paragraphs appears over-differentiated. Here, too, readers may wonder what the point is and why they can’t find it.
So, what is your font size? Are you double-spacing? In a standard format of double-spaced Courier 10, you should get about 250 words per page. This means you might want your average paragraphs to run about 175 words. Longer paragraphs will give a feel of thoroughness and complexity but may bog readers down. Shorter paragraphs will move briskly but may fragment your readers’ perceptions. You may want to vary your paragraph length. Use long paragraphs to explore and develop ideas and shorter ones to summarize or make transitions.
Briefly, there’s no set rule for how long a paragraph should be. Consider your important divisions. Consider how the paragraph will look on the page. Consider your reader and your purpose in writing.
III. Transitions
Each paragraph you write should have a single focus–usually some issue or question that you want to set up, map out, and make a point about. Your paragraph should do the following (note how the ideal paragraph resembles the structure of the essay in miniature):
1. Topic Sentence – The “introduction” of the paragraph–what it will be about. The topic sentence should always clearly state:
(a) how it relates to the point you’ve just made in the previous paragraph and
(b) where you are in your larger argument (the relationship between the new issue this paragraph is introducing and the overall thesis of the essay).
This sense of location is precisely what transition means. Note that it also applies within paragraphs: just as your larger points should logically progress from one to another, so too should the smaller ideas found in each stage of the argument.
2. Evidence – You should provide all textual examples and information the audience will need to understand your train of thought.
3. Interpretation – Here you explain the significance of your evidence, why you’ve chosen it and what it means. You should also be sure to address any possible opposition to your interpretation. In other words, be sure to demonstrate what makes your reading more compelling and reasonable than any other.
4. “So What?” – Your paragraph’s “conclusion” of sorts. You need to make it very clear to your audience how your interpretation of this specific point is essential to the larger argument your essay is making.
IV. Some general comments on paragraphs:
1. Never write two paragraphs that make the same point–condense them into a single paragraph. An example: if you’re arguing about women in the Aeneid, you should not devote a single paragraph to each woman. It’s inefficient and boring to read; such a set-up relies on the transitional power of the list, and you don’t want your reader checking off items. One
useful alternative would be to spend one paragraph to the most complex of the women, explaining how she functions to delay Trojan (and male) destiny, and then use a second paragraph to show how other women in the epic also function according to this interpretation that you’ve made.
2. A useful metaphor for the paragraph is that of the rung of a ladder. Multiple rungs held together allow you to climb to a goal, and each rung must be stepped on in turn; the points you make in your paragraphs combine to prove your thesis (the formal essayist’s goal), and they too must occur in the proper sequence. Another metaphor is that of the stepping-stone: use each paragraph or point to reach the next stage of the argument.
3. The result is that paragraph order is crucial. You need to think seriously about which of your many points, ideas, and observations belongs first in the sequence–you don’t want to be argumentatively backtracking in the middle of your essay because you forgot to put your most basic premise at the start. One way to check the logical order of your paragraphs is to take a pair of scissors and literally cut the essay up into paragraph-sized pieces, rearranging them in various sequences and seeing which line of argument best proves your thesis.
Evidence Paragraph Exercise[2]
Use as many of the following textual passages as you can to construct an evidence paragraph supporting one of the three following theses. We will take a vote and discuss how you interpreted these passages when you are finished. If you notice contradictions between the passages, you might try to accommodate them in your thesis. REMEMBER, YOUR
PARAGRAPH MUST HAVE A SPECIFIED TOPIC AND DIRECTION.
Sample Theses:
a. _Pudd’nhead Wilson_, Twain’s story of racial imposture, calls into question the notion of racial determinism by demonstrating the extent to which characters make themselves not only through their own application but through the tools that society imparts to them.
b. _Pudd’nhead Wilson_, Twain’s story of racial crossover, demonstrates the extent to which people inhabit racially-fixed identities that are imprinted at the moment of birth and unavoidable even through the rigors of social training and personal application.
c. _Pudd’nhead Wilson_, Twain’s story of racial identity, interrogates at the same time as it reinstates the notion of racial determinism by allowing small victories for society’s role in shaping the individual’s identity while ultimately upholding the notion that the body is really the final arbiter of the matter.
Sample Evidence to select from:
1. “To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro. She was a slave, and saleable as such. Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave and, by a fiction of law and custom, a negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white comrade; but even the father of the white child was able to tell the children apart — little as he had commerce with them — by their clothes” (64).
2. “‘Tom’ was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He would cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then climax the thing with ‘holding his breath . . . The baby Tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound anybody he could reach with his rattle” (76).
3. “Chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter; strong because he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter because Tom furnished him plenty of practice — on white boys whom he hated and was afraid of” (78).
4. “He remained at Yale two years, and then threw up the struggle. He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting into trouble . . . Tom’s Eastern polish was not popular among the young people” (84-85).
5. “[I]n our case it was merely misfortune, and nobody’s fault. Our parents were well to do, there in Italy, and we were their only child. We were of the old Florentine nobility. . . . When we escaped from that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some respects men. Experience had taught us some valuable things” (90-91).
6. “[S]he would be independent of the human race thenceforth for evermore if hard work and economy could accomplish it. When the boat touched the levee at New Orleans she bade good-bye to her comrades on the Grand Mogul and moved her kit ashore. But she was back in an hour. The bank had gone to smash and carried her four hundred dollars with it” (100-101).
7. “If he met a friend, he found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished — his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a shake. It was the ‘nigger’ in him asserting its humility, and he blushed and was abashed” (118).
8. “Pudd’nhead Wilson was suddenly become a man of consequence. When asked to run for the mayoralty Saturday night he was risking defeat, but Sunday morning found him a made man and his success assured.”
9. “Dey ain’t nothin’ a white mother won’t do for her chile. Who made ’em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made ’em. In de inside, mothers is all de same” (174).
10. “Troop after troop of citizens came to serenade Wilson, and require a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips — for all his sentences were golden now, all were marvellous. His long fight against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good” (224).
[Quotations are taken from Mark Twain, _Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins_, ed. Malcolm Bradbury (New York: Penguin Books, 1986].
This exercise is designed to help students to construct interesting evidence paragraphs that both support and depart from the thesis statement as it appears in the introduction. Part of the task of this exercise is recognizing and evaluating evidence that is not, so to speak, “self-evident”; students can deduce from the textual excerpts I’ve provided that multiple and even contradictory interpretations are possible from a given set of textual details. Two elements are central in completing this in-class assignment: one, that a transitional/topic sentence introduce the paragraph and that it not simply repeat the thesis but specify what aspect of the thesis it will address; and, two, that it make sense of the evidence to be offered up in its support.
[1] Adapted from and inspired by Michael Gamer, Jack Lynch, and Michael Barsanti as well as “A Guide for Writing Research Papers” at Capital Community College, Hartford (http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/index.shtml).
[2] Exercise courtesy of Jean Feerick at Penn’s TeachWeb online writing resource database (http://www.english.upenn.edu/Grad/Teachweb/jfevid.html).