3.5: Introduction to Effective Paragraphs

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Lumen Learning
Lumen Learning

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What you’ll learn to do: recognize and evaluate effective paragraphs

The paragraph is the building block of essay writing. The word itself, according to the Oxford Dictionary Online, is defined as “a distinct section of a piece of writing, usually dealing with a single theme and indicated by a new line, indentation, or numbering.”

Paragraphs are important for ease of reading; they help to offer ideas in “chunks” that the eye and brain can more easily comprehend (as opposed to offering information in one large block of text, which is hard to read).

In academic writing, paragraphs show changes in ideas or further development of ideas. Typically, paragraphs present mini ideas that develop out of the thesis sentence’s main idea. They are the fundamental units of academic writing; without good paragraphs, you simply cannot clearly convey your ideas and claims.

This section will introduce you to strategies and techniques for writing effective paragraphs.

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Revision and Adaptation. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Cohesion and coherence. Authored by: Amy Guptill.. Provided by: The College at Brockport, SUNY. . Located at: textbooks.opensuny.org/writing-in-college-from-competence-to-excellence/. Project: Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence. . License: CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
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