Writing a Good Paragraph

Here are some ideas to consider while you are writing the body of your papers. After you have a water-tight thesis and outline (something we do not all have yet) and a good introduction and conclusion in mind, you need to put some healthy flesh on the skeleton.

Remember that you can create beauty and stay simple at the same time. Complexity in an essay is rarely a thing of beauty. Think bicycle, not space shuttle.

As each of your main points is independent of the others, each of your paragraphs should be independent. Further paragraphs should support the main thesis and systematically develop the main heads. Remember that a "I" must have a "II," and an "A" must have a "B." A well-developed outline will be structured like this without actually including the letters and numbers in the essay.

Here is an example of the paragraph structure you should consider:

Acme widgets have become the industry standard [paragraph summary]. More American homes have our widgets in their tool drawers than any other widget [support]. Hakim Olson of the Widget Manufacturers Union has called our widgets "the most common resident of the American junk drawer" [support]. Even foreign manufacturers are racing to produce what our research and development team perfected ten years ago [support]. We are not content, however, with popularity alone [transition to another independent paragraph].

Acme widgets also [note the connection to the previous paragraph] boasts superior quality of materials [new paragraph summary]...

We will discuss this more in class. Experiment as you write. Be an artist and a wordsmith. See what looks good and sounds good when you read it.