The Style Guide
Sentences
Most people consider the paragraph the most important form of writing. But the sentence is where all paragraph, all writing, really begins. Creating sentence is a rhetorical process.
Paragraphs
The formalization of the paragraph dates back to the mid 1800's when Alexander Bain identified several characteristics for paragraphs that we still follow today. Bain believed that all paragraphs singel a central idea and topic sentences. Conventions for creating paragraphs exist to help writers organize ideas and thoughts and to help readers digest the writing.
"Paragraphs" By Kimberely Smith
If you’re like most students, you likely have a lot of experience writing paragraphs. You’ve probably also learned a variety of rules for composing paragraphs which you may or may not have found helpful. Instruction on paragraph content and organization is practically ubiquitous in writing handbooks and many high school English classes. But have you ever stopped to consider what a paragraph is really or wondered how experienced writers use them? This section aims to answer these questions with a level of nuance that will help you succeed in a college writing context and beyond. The first thing to know about paragraphs is that they’re notoriously hard to define. The paragraph began as a symbol used in Ancient Greek, but you’re probably more familiar with the paragraph’s modern form—a group of sentences (or sometimes a single sentence) that is set apart from other paragraphs in a text using spacing or indentation. At the most basic level, this is what a paragraph is. It’s a chunk of writing that makes up a portion of a larger text. This definition doesn’t offer a lot of information about what a paragraph should contain, however, and that question has been the source of a long-running debate in composition.
The earliest ideas about what a paragraph should include and how it should be structured come from Alexander Bain, who described a paragraph as “a collection of sentences with unity of purpose” in 1866 (qtd. in Duncan 474). Bain’s writing is where we get a number of strict rules for writing paragraphs, including the notion that paragraphs should always include topic sentences and that all the sentences in a paragraph should discuss the same idea. Guidelines for paragraphs can be helpful, especially if you’re writing in a strict time limit or if you’re just learning to write in an academic context; however, the rules we get from Bain can also be incredibly limiting. You’ve probably noticed that many good paragraphs don’t follow the so-called “rules” you’re familiar with, and that’s because paragraphs are more complicated than any formula can capture. If paragraphs can’t be reduced to a single formula, then how should you think about them as a student? You can understand paragraphs in two ways: as aids for readers and writers and as rhetorical tools governed by discourse conventions.
Paragraphs Help Readers Read and Writers Write
Paragraphs serve a practical purpose for readers and writers. Paragraphs that are visually distinguished from one another make reading a longer text more approachable. With paragraphs, you’re less likely to lose your place and more likely to be able to follow the writer’s ideas, especially if the writer has constructed their paragraphs thoughtfully. Likewise, paragraphs give writers natural breaks during text construction to pause, take stock of what has been written so far, and think ahead to what might be written next (McGee). While you don’t necessarily have to plan out your paragraph breaks before writing, you can use paragraphs as a tool to mentally organize your ideas and better manage the complex task of writing.
Paragraphs are Tools to Use to Your Advantage
Paragraphs are also rhetorical tools that writers use to achieve their goals. If you gave a room of professional writers a page full of sentences and asked them to divide the text into paragraphs, you could expect those writers to each come up with different solutions. Which version was better would depend on what you intended the finished text to accomplish, but many of the versions, perhaps even all of them, would have merits. Because there is no single formula for creating a “good” paragraph, there are multiple approaches you can take to paragraphing. You might decide to start a new paragraph to emphasize a point at the end of the previous paragraph, to signal a transition to a new idea, to break up extended discussion of a topic into more manageable chunks, or for many other reasons. In other words, you can think about the paragraph as one tool that you can use for various purposes and contexts.
When deciding how you will use paragraphs in your text, it’s important to remember that paragraphs are governed by genre and the conventions of discourse communities, just like many other aspects of writing. This means that different audiences have different expectations for paragraphs. A journalist writing an article in a newspaper might be comfortable writing the occasional single-sentence paragraph because they are aware that audiences expect shorter bite-sized paragraphs from news articles, especially articles published online. On the other hand, if a researcher writing an academic article made the same paragraphing decision, their audience might find it off putting, since academic texts tend to contain longer paragraphs. Understanding what type of text you’re writing and who you’re writing for will therefore help you determine what length and style of paragraph you might want to aim for.
Tips for Writing Strong Paragraphs
Because paragraphing conventions differ across genres and discourse communities, what makes a good paragraph will be highly dependent on what it is that you’re writing and who you’re writing it for. With that said, here are a few tips you can try if you’re looking to write stronger paragraphs:
- Provide evidence and elaborate with audience and intention in mind. Writing instructors are always telling students to “elaborate.” What they mean is that your paragraphs should probably contain enough background information, evidence, and explanation for them to have their intended impact on the audience. Ideas that are important to the overall purpose of your text and that the audience is unfamiliar with will require more evidence and explanation within a paragraph than ideas that are tangential to the text’s purpose or represent facts or ideas audiences are already very knowledgeable about.
- Spell things out and show connections between paragraphs. Remember that readers can’t read your mind. English is what’s known as a writer-responsible language, which means that readers typically expect writers to explain important points and make important connections for them. In sum, to strengthen your paragraphs, make connections between ideas and paragraphs explicit and explain how evidence supports your arguments.
- Think about the role of each paragraph in the overall text. By definition, a paragraph is only part of the larger text; each paragraph serves some kind of role in relation to the others. One paragraph’s job might be to intrigue the reader and introduce a claim, another might serve to provide supporting evidence, explain methodology, or urge the reader to action. Once you understand what role each paragraph plays in the text as a whole, you can more clearly see what each paragraph needs to contain. Additionally, if you find that you can’t identify the purpose of a paragraph when looking at the bigger picture, you might consider revising it or removing it entirely.
- Defend your paragraphing decisions and keep an open mind. The paragraph is a rhetorical tool. Because there are many valid ways of creating paragraphs, and just as many mediocre or flat-out bad ways, one of the best things you can do to write stronger paragraphs is just to practice making thoughtful choices about them. Do your paragraphs follow the expectations of the genre and discourse community you are writing within? If not, why not? What logic is guiding the organization of your paragraphs? What is that single-sentence paragraph doing to make your text effective? Why is this section of your paper divided into three paragraphs instead of two? Would it be better the other way around, or is this structure easier for your audience to read? Your answers will always be subjective and contextual, but these are the types of questions that will help you take control over your writing.
Voice
Voice
Point of View
Point of view is rhetorical. First, second, and third person present options for creating objectivity, subjectivity, and perspective.
Punctuation
Punctuation is a rhetorical process. A handbook for grammar did not fall from the sky. People made these rules up and then imposed them on other people. Learning how to think about punctuation as a tool you use to create an effect on your writing is important. Punctuation isn't just a set of rules you learn and memorize and then mimic. Making decisions about punctuation should be about a purpose and objective. What are you trying to do with a sentence or paragraph and how does punctuating that sentence or paragraph help you achieve that goal?
APA Citation Style
Citation styles are rhetorical. Students often ask, "What's a works cited or reference page? Why do they matter?" I typically respond that it's the place where we get to see all the intertextual pieces of other texts an author used to build a new text. It is textual DNA. It is important to understand that referencing and citing is not just a cruel and unusual method for evaluating my writing? It's a way for scholars & researchers across the world to share information with each other because they can't meet and discuss their ideas and research regularly. Yes, citation styles are very different, but each style has a rhetorical purpose. For example, why does APA start with the date? The sciences value the date of research. That doesn't mean that MLA doesn't value the date of research. Of course they do, but an article about localized cancer treatment from 1999 is not going to provide the most current research on cancer treatment; however, an article about Shakespeare from 1900 might still be one of the best. Citations are about reading citations rhetorically, finding value in the source from the details in the citation. The title of an academic article actually means something. The title tells us about the density of the content inside the text. For example, the article title "Combination gefitinib and methotrexate to treat ectopic pregnancy" tells me I need to back up and find a broader text to enter into the discussion. The title tells me I have no idea what is going on. That's knowledge. We're not dumb. We now know we need to back up and start with a broader article on this topic that we can access and work our way to the denser articles. A works cited or reference page is about entry ways into conversations. We can use it to follow a trail of connected research. Citations are a rhetorical pathway in the same way the title of the article tells us something about the accessibility of the information in that article.
Here are some resources on using an APA style guide to cite source material
MLA Citation Style
Quoting and Paraphrasing
Quoting and paraphrasing source material are important and rhetorical. What you decide to quote or paraphrase depends on your purpose and audience. One approach to quoting source material is to limit quotes to certain types of information. If you can summarize information in your own words, then you should summarize source material first. Reserve quotes for information that is difficult to summarize in your own words. Think about the types of information you might struggle to summarize. Statistics, definitions, and theoretical outlines might be types of information you might want to quote.
Paraphrasing captures someone's ideas or words in ways that require acknowledgment.
Here are some activities and readings on quoting and paraphrasing source materials:
Summarizing
Summary is a primary writing genre for academia. You have most likely already noticed that a large portion of academic writing is summaries of academic articles, books, and source materials. The ability to summarize source material concisely is important in academic communities to 1) demonstrate an existing understanding of a body of knowledge and reading and 2) to avoid having to cite and quote multiple sources that are not necessarily central to the argument but are important to contextualize the writing and establish the purpose.
Works Cited on This Page
Duncan, Mike. “Whatever Happened to the Paragraph?” College English, vol. 69, no. 5, 2007, pp. 470-495.
McGee, Iain. “Reconsidering Paragraphing Pedagogy: A Descriptivist Perspective.” English in Education, vol. 50, no. 3, 2016, pp. 233-254.