Writing - Writing a paragraph

Paragraphs are part of our writing, and part of our reading. Many of us don’t really know what they are for. Well consider reading something, or indeed writing something without a paragraph. It would be hard to structure our writing without the paragraph and it would be even harder to read something with no paragraph.

Think of a paragraph like a sign post. They help us navigate the text we are either reading or writing. Writing paragraphs help us tell the reader exactly what is going in within the text. For the readers, paragraphs help them move from point to point.

A lot of experts suggest that there should be a paragraph for every point made in the text. But what if you have a lot of short points that don’t need elaborating on? Is this where we make bullet points or do we extend each paragraph.

It all depends on who you are writing for. If you are writing for the web, the paragraphs are generally shorter than if you are writing a novel or an essay.

Some experts believe that paragraphs need to be ‘wider than they are deep’, this apparently will stop people becoming intimidated at lots of unbroken text. Again, it all depends who you are writing for.