What is a Paragraph?

What is a Paragraph? Organizing Thoughts to Good Writing

Writing can be likened to building a house. You have to put up your pillars or foundations first to make your house strong. When it comes to writing, you build your thoughts by using paragraphs. This is why for many writers and readers, the paragraph is a primary tool in building and organizing thoughts in order to achieve good writing.

What is a Paragraph?

A paragraph is made up of several sentences to support a general topic. It is usually made of 5 to 8 sentences or more to build up the main idea of your essay or paper. In fact, all of the paragraphs in your essay should be talking about the main idea.

A main idea may have several points to it like the branches of a tree all working together for the tree to thrive.

what is a paragraph developing topics

All the sub-topics in the branches make up a very meaningful summer vacation. You can start your paragraph in any one of the sub-topics. In order to start writing your paragraph, let us learn about the different parts of a paragraph.

What is a Paragraph? In a standard essay or paper, there are several parts in a paragraph.

You start your paragraph with a topic sentence. The topic sentence introduces the general idea of the paragraph. Remember that for every paragraph, a topic sentence makes a summary of what the particular paragraph is talking about. When you make your introduction, make it interesting to capture the attention of your readers or listeners. After the topic sentence, the supporting details follow. Study the format below to write your paragraph.

Using one of the sub-topics in the above example, let us see how we can use the format in paragraph-writing.

what is a paragraph format writing

As you can see for every main point, there are supporting details along with the sub-details. If you have other points to make , you may insert your 2nd and 3rd main points along with the sub-details. Moreover for your conclusion, you may rephrase your topic sentence. The point in concluding your paragraph is to summarize what you just talked about. It is best to leave your readers with a good feeling that they have learned or discovered something.

What is a Paragraph? There are four kinds of paragraph in a standard paper.

#1 A paragraph that introduces

The introductory paragraph is very important for it will draw the interest of your readers or listeners. Many times, professional writers use a quotation or an anecdote to begin their essay. Just make sure that whatever story you want to use, it should be relevant to the main idea of your essay. Moreover, an introductory paragraph establishes the relevance of your paper. In this paragraph, you can cite background information of what your paper hopes to discuss,

#2 A paragraph that develops your ideas

This is the body paragraph, which discusses the sub-topics. Like all the other paragraphs, you can use your topic sentence to introduce a sub-topic to support your main idea.

#3 A paragraph that acts as a signpost

This is the transitional paragraph or a signpost that tells your readers you are moving on to another topic or a more detailed discussion. In this paragraph, you can provide hints or a summary of the new information you are giving. In this way, you give you readers a guide on what to expect.

#4 Concluding Paragraph

Your concluding paragraph should strengthen your main idea. It will take all the important information in the previous paragraphs to make a convincing summary. The key is to leave your readers satisfied with the points you made.