For Professor Anthony

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How to Write a Paragraph B. R. Bickmore, Brigham Young University

Introduction

When you move on to graduate school or professional life, you will be expected to write pieces

that are much larger than anything you have produced before. Some students have little problem

making this transition, while others find it extremely painful. My experience is that students

who find this transition painful generally have trouble with the organization of their writing—

even on a small scale. If you do not organize your sentences and paragraphs well, you may still

be able to write a short paper that your instructor can follow. But as your writing projects

become longer and more detailed, it becomes harder for someone else to follow what you are

saying, and harder for you to come up with what to say and where to say it. It’s easy for

everyone involved to become hopelessly lost.

It’s more complicated than you might think to write a really well crafted sentence or paragraph—

expert writers look at a number of things when they draft and edit. There are a few key

techniques for drafting and editing sentences and paragraphs, however, that are easily learned,

but that can help most people quickly and dramatically improve the quality of their writing.

Here I am going to introduce you to a key technique for organizing paragraphs that should help

most of you quickly become substantially better writers.

Paragraph Logic

Maybe you have noticed that two people can sometimes read your writing, but come away with

substantially different ideas about its meaning. It probably isn’t all your fault, because part of

the problem is that people tend to see what they expect, even when it just isn’t there. But people

being what they are, part of a writer’s job is to anticipate readers’ expectations so that effective

communication can happen. Whether they realize it or not, most readers approach a paragraph

looking for three things, which Joseph Williams labeled the issue, the discussion, and the

POINT. That is, they look for a brief opening segment (one or more sentences) where the author

introduces the issue at hand, a longer discussion of the themes introduced in the opening

segment, and a single sentence, either at the end of the issue or the discussion, that clearly states

the POINT the author is trying to get across.1 Following are brief descriptions of what Williams

meant by the issue, the discussion, and the POINT of a paragraph.

The Issue

You may be thinking that the issue is just a fancy name for the “topic sentence” you were taught

to write in primary and secondary school, but they really serve a quite different function. Let’s

compare. According to one website designed to help fifth-graders learn to write,

Every paragraph needs a topic sentence. The topic sentence is usually the first sentence of the paragraph. It

gives the reader an idea of what the paragraph is going to be about.2

1 Joseph M. Williams (1995), Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 92.

2 “Topic Sentences,” http://www.geocities.com/fifth_grade_tpes/longfellow.html, accessed September 14, 2007.

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Within the typical model of writing that grade-schoolers are taught, the “topic sentence” tells the

reader up front what the point of the paragraph is, and subsequent sentences in the paragraph are

meant to support whatever claims were made there. This is an easy way to teach kids to

compose basic arguments, but a little more subtlety is often required of adult writers.

In Williams’ model, the issue segment of a paragraph performs two main functions that make

this kind of subtlety possible. First, it draws the reader in by describing an interesting situation

or defining a problem. After all, why should anyone want to read what you have to say, unless

you link it to some kind of problem they care about? Second, the issue links the present

paragraph to the previous one, ensuring a logical flow to your argument.

Let’s consider one of the previous paragraphs in this essay to illustrate what the issue segment

does for a paragraph. When I first wrote it, the paragraph looked like this.

[Example 1]

Whether they realize it or not, most readers approach a paragraph looking for three

things, which Joseph Williams labeled the issue, the discussion, and the POINT.

That is, they look for a brief opening segment where the author introduces the issue at

hand, a longer discussion of the themes introduced in the opening segment, and a single

sentence, either at the end of the issue or the discussion, that clearly states the POINT the

author is trying to get across. Following are brief descriptions of what Williams meant

by the issue, the discussion, and the POINT of a paragraph.

I realized, however, that while the first sentence was my issue statement, it performed its

intended functions poorly. I had failed to hook the reader by explaining why anyone should care

about what readers are looking for, and I had brought in completely new actors—the readers—

without connecting them to what I had previously said. Now look at the paragraph again, after I

revised the issue statement in bold.

[Example 2]

Maybe you have noticed that two people can sometimes read your writing, but come

away with substantially different ideas about its meaning. In a sense, it isn’t really

all your fault, because part of the problem is that people tend to see what they

expect, even when it just isn’t there. But people being what they are, part of a

writer’s job is to anticipate readers’ expectations so that effective communication

can happen. Whether they realize it or not, most readers approach a paragraph

looking for three things, which Joseph Williams labeled the issue, the discussion,

and the POINT. That is, they look for a brief opening segment where the author

introduces the issue at hand, a longer discussion of the themes introduced in the opening

segment, and a single sentence, either at the end of the issue or the discussion, that clearly

states the POINT the author is trying to get across. Following are brief descriptions of

what Williams meant by the issue, the discussion, and the POINT of a paragraph.

Notice how the actors in the first sentence of the issue are “you” and people who read what you

have written. This links back to the previous sentence, which talks about helping you become a

better writer. The first three sentences go on describe a problem you will often face as a writer—

How To Write a Paragraph

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how to connect with readers. Finally, the last sentence of the issue states the POINT of the

paragraph as a whole.

As a reader of this essay, try to imagine how your experience would have been different if I had

not altered that paragraph. Perhaps you would not have been completely lost, but I suspect it

would not have “felt” quite right, either. The cumulative effect of an essay full of paragraphs

with inadequate issue statements is usually a very uncomfortable reading experience, and you

would have a more difficult time following the overall trend of the argument.

The Discussion

An argument is more than just an issue statement, of course. Once a writer brings up an issue,

she has to either 1) provide evidence that she has some solution to at least part of the problem, or

2) develop the argument that this really is an important and/or difficult issue. Consider the

following paragraph, in which I have bolded the discussion.

[Example 3]

If you have chosen to be a geologist, you have chosen to be a writer – there is no escape!

Although the amount and type of writing required varies between geological careers,

writing is one of the major activities of all professionals because scientific work has no

value if it is not communicated. An academic scientist spends much of her time

writing journal articles, grant proposals, and course materials. A petroleum

geologist spends a good deal of time writing reports for managers. A consulting

geologist must write geological reports for clients who may know nothing about

geology. In every case, the geologist will be rewarded for writing quickly and well

for the target audience.

If the POINT of the paragraph (the last sentence of the issue) is that every job in geology

involves a significant amount of writing, then the rest of the paragraph is clearly meant to

support this POINT. In other cases, the discussion here merely develops the themes introduced

in the issue, rather than giving direct support to a specific claim (see Example 6 below.)

The POINT

Anyone would agree that a paragraph ought to have a point, but a well-written paragraph has a

POINT that is easy for readers to find. This is why Williams suggests that the POINT of each

paragraph be distilled into a single sentence at the end of the issue or discussion. If your readers

can easily find a clearly articulated POINT, they can quickly judge how firmly you have

established it. In Example 3, for instance, the second sentence clearly states the POINT (all

kinds of geologists have to write); the subsequent discussion provides a number of examples

(writing by academics, petroleum geologists, and consulting geologists) to support this claim,

and a final statement about something all these examples have in common.

The following paragraph, on the other hand, lacks a clear POINT.

[Example 4]

By 130 million years ago, the South Atlantic began to open near the tip of what is now

South Africa. As this zone of rifting migrated northward, it gradually opened the South

Atlantic…. Continued breakup of the southern landmass led to the separation of Africa

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and Antarctica and sent India on a northward journey. By the early Cenozoic, about 50

million years ago, Australia had separated from Antarctica, and the South Atlantic had

emerged as a full-fledged Ocean.3

Example 4 seems to be a string of related claims, but there is no clear statement of how they are

related. Consider the effect of adding a clear statement of the POINT.

[Example 5]

The next split in Pangaea, which occurred over about 80 million years, formed the

South Atlantic. By 130 million years ago, the South Atlantic had begun to open near the

tip of what is now South Africa. As this zone of rifting migrated northward, it gradually

opened the South Atlantic…. Continued breakup of the southern landmass led to the

separation of Africa and Antarctica and sent India on a northward journey. By the early

Cenozoic, about 50 million years ago, Australia had separated from Antarctica, and the

South Atlantic had emerged as a full-fledged Ocean.

Now the reader can quickly and easily identify what this paragraph is supposed to be saying, and

judge how well the discussion supports the claim.

I noted above that readers look for the POINT of a paragraph at the end of either the issue or the

discussion, but all the examples so far have appeared at the end of the issue. It seems that most

paragraphs are structured this way. But sometimes it is more effective to choose the other option,

placing your POINT at the very end of the paragraph. When the POINT appears at the end of the

issue, the reader is drawn in and then immediately told where the paragraph is going; this

strategy can help readers stay firmly oriented. But if the POINT is a particularly bold claim, for

instance, you may want to present your evidence up front to soften readers up before hitting them

with the full force of your argument. Alternatively, the POINT may lead so beautifully into the

next paragraph that it makes sense to put it at the end. The following paragraph uses this kind of

strategy.

[Example 6]

Scientists rarely read entire articles. This is because, although our goal is to make

science as a whole internally consistent—it’s no good proposing a geological hypothesis

that conceptually violates fundamental theories in physics, for example—the scientific

literature remains so vast that nobody can possibly master all of it. We comb through

databases, searching for any literature that might bear on our work, and it usually turns

out that the stack of literature that could be significantly related is much too large. To

stem the tide, we look at a couple key features to determine whether we want to bother

finding and printing the whole article; and if we do, we look at a few more key parts of a

paper for the information we want. Then, if we just can’t get around it, we might read the

entire thing. Given this reality, it is essential that writers of scientific papers

organize their work into an accepted format, so that colleagues can quickly find

what they want.4

3 Frederick K. Lutgens and Edward J. Tarbuck (2005) Foundations of Earth Science, 4th ed., Upper Saddle River,

NJ, Pearson Education, 144.

4 Barry R. Bickmore (2007) How to Write a Scientific Paper.

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The first two sentences (in italics) introduce the issue at hand—even though scientists want their

work to be consistent with the rest of science, we don’t have time to become familiar with more

than a tiny fraction of it. The next several sentences (in normal font) form the discussion, where

the themes introduced in the issue are developed further. Finally, the last sentence (in bold)

states the POINT. In this case, the POINT is not particularly bold or unusual, but it does follow

quite naturally from the issue as it was developed in the discussion. And since the next

paragraph in that essay is about balancing your desire to get colleagues to read your entire paper

with their need to access information quickly, it works well to put the POINT where it is.

Into Practice

As you edit a paragraph, ask yourself the following questions and try to think of changes that

would make the answer “yes” in each case.

1. Do the first sentences (one or more) of the paragraph clearly state an issue that readers should care about? That is, can you detect the issue statement?

2. Is the issue connected with readers’ prior knowledge or with what has been written previously in the same piece?

3. Is there a single sentence, either at the end of the issue or discussion, that clearly states the POINT?

4. Do the remaining sentences in the paragraph (the discussion) clearly support the POINT?

Once in a while it will be expedient to go against some of these guidelines, but if you edit with

the intention of conforming when possible, your resulting work will be much easier to read and

evaluate. This goes for you, too—not just for your readers. And if you can read and evaluate

your own work more easily, you will have an easier time deciding where you have leaps in logic,

whether certain points would fit better in another location, etc. In short, you will be able to get

that thesis done!