Organizing Your Paragraphs For A Clear, Well-Written Presentation
Each paragraph in your text should contain one main topic that relates to the rest of the ideas presented in a piece. While nothing’s stopping you from throwing ten disparate subjects into the same block of sentences, that’s not a good idea if you’re aiming to compose clear, well-written text.
1. Your main, controlling idea should appear in a topic statement (using one or more sentences), either at the start of the paragraph or close to it. Think of it as the introduction to an essay – it sets a meaningful pattern about what the remained of the text will be about.
2. Discuss general ideas before going into specifics. That way, the reader will get to wrap his head around the big picture, before getting swarmed in by the details.
3. There are several ways of supporting the main idea of a paragraph. Each one can be useful, depending on both the subject and the associated information you plan to present. The following are some of the most common ways to do it:
- Definition. This entails explaining the meaning of the topic, answering the major questions about it (who, what, when, where, why and how).
- Classification. You classify the topic based on its numerous characteristics.
- Description. You detail the item’s numerous characteristics.
- Expansion. Here, you basically expand on the subject, paraphrasing expert opinion and previous findings on the subject.
- Exemplification. You give examples that give the main idea credence, including statistics, facts and research findings.
- Others. We won’t go into the details of the rest. Suffice to say, there are many other ways to organize a paragraph in order to support its central concept, including cause and effect, comparison, etc.
4. Use a writing expert software. Apart from organizing your paragraphs, you need to make sure that you use a good tool to help you iron out possible gaps in your writing. That will guarantee that your paragraphs aren’t only structured well, they read nice too.