The example paragraph

Here’s a true story from the trenches of public education. A few years back, an 11th-grade student handed in to his teacher (me) a typed, two-page, single-spaced essay that had no capital letters, punctuation marks or paragraphs in it whatsoever. None at all. Just one block of uninterrupted text, like some inscription on a stone monument from ancient Rome. Now, years later, in thinking about the three missing elements -- capital letters, punctuation, paragraphing -- it occurs to me that the greatest crime may have been the lack of paragraphs.

Writing these blog entries (basically micro-essays of one to four paragraphs in length) has forced me to think carefully about the paragraph as a unit of meaning. Even more than sentences, paragraphs are the building blocks of writing. This is why I think it’s so important for a composition class to require many paragraph-length assignments that demand multiple revisions, rather than a handful of long essays with no opportunity to revise. The latter pedagogy encourages reinforcing and repeating mistakes instead of correcting and improving.

So what is a paragraph anyway? Native American writer Sherman Alexie provides my favorite definition in his essay “Superman and Me” when he remembers his epiphany as a child at realizing what a paragraph is intended for:

I still remember the exact moment when I first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph. I didn’t have the vocabulary to say “paragraph,” but realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence.

Eureka -- that’s it! Everything in a paragraph -- every word, phrase, clause and sentence -- must have a valid reason for being grouped together and all must work together to further the purpose (thesis idea) of the essay.

The “bread-and-butter” type of paragraph in college writing is the example paragraph. Basically, there are three parts to an example paragraph (the third part is optional): a topic sentence(s); examples; and a summary sentence. The topic sentence is the mini-thesis statement of the paragraph. In a larger sense, the topic sentence is a sub-idea of the main idea expressed in the essay’s thesis statement. It can also be more than one sentence. Often, the second sentence of an example paragraph amplifies or elaborates on the first (topic) sentence and thus is part of the whole topic sentence unit. Next come the examples. These may consist of statistics, direct quotations, paraphrased information, brief summaries, anecdotes, historical precedents, etc. All of these examples must support the paragraph’s topic sentence and connect together in a logical sequence. Last comes (sometimes) a summary sentence that puts a punctuation mark on the ideas in the paragraph. Some writers (Mark Twain and Ralph Waldo Emerson leap to mind) were outstanding writers of pithy aphorisms that served as summary sentences. But you don’t always need one; an unnecessary summary sentence insults readers by rehashing what they’ve already come to understand, like explaining the punch line of a joke. Nonetheless, with or without a summary sentence, your example paragraph must transition logically into whatever paragraph follows it.

Regarding paragraphs, just imagine how you would feel if your teacher handed you a 20-page essay to read that had no paragraphs, just 20 pages of margin-to-margin unbroken text. So, in turn, never hand in a composition without paragraphs (any more than you’d like to read one).

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.