What is Paragraph? An Overview

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 1. Paragraph

A paragraph is a group of sentences that develop one main idea. A paragraph has no specific length. It can be short or long. The number of sentences is not important but you should write enough sentences to develop the main idea clearly.

2. Structure of the Paragraph

A paragraph contains three major parts. These parts are:

  • Topic Sentences
  • Supporting Sentences
  • Concluding Sentences
2.1 The Topic Sentences

The topic sentence expresses the main idea of the paragraph. It does two works. First, it introduces the topic of the paragraph. Second, It limits the topic to a specific aspect that can be discussed in a single paragraph. The specific aspect of the topic is called controlling idea.

2.2 Supporting  Sentences

Supporting sentences support the topic sentence by giving reasons, examples, facts, and quotations.

2.3 Concluding Sentences

A Concluding sentence is a single sentence that ends the paragraph. 

3. Unity and Coherence

Besides the three parts of the paragraph, a good paragraph also includes unity and coherence.

3.1 Unity

Unity means that every single paragraph should develop only one main idea. This main idea is stated in the topic sentence. Furthermore, each supporting sentence develops the main idea. 

For instance, if your topic sentence announces that you are going to discuss two characteristics of gold, then only discuss those. Don't include other ideas such as gold mining or the price of gold.

3.2 Coherence

Coherence means that your paragraph should be easy to read and understand because:

  1.  You develop supporting sentences in a logical order.
  2. Your sentences are connected by the use of appropriate transition signals.
For instance, in the following paragraph there are two supporting ideas:

  • gold is precious
  • gold is valuable
both of these supporting ideas are discussed one after the other, and an example is given for each one. We can call it logical order. Moreover, the relationship between each idea is shown by using suitable transitional words and phrases e.g first of all, for example, another important characteristic, and in conclusion.

Review of the above lesson:

A well-written paragraph contains five elements:

  • topic sentence
  • supporting sentence
  • concluding sentence
  • unity 
  • coherence




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