Write effective paragraphs
Paragraphs break our writing into manageable pieces. These days we've become used to short paragraphs and most are only four to six lines. We even occasionally use a one-sentence paragraph; in fact, press releases mainly consist of one-sentence paragraphs.In business writing, your main idea must go in the first sentence. In fiction writing, you have more leeway. A common mistake is treating paragraphs as mini-essays with the conclusion at the end. One way of checking whether your main idea is at the beginning of each paragraph is to re-read your first sentences, either as you're writing or at the end.
After your topic sentence, the rest of your paragraph then explains and expands on your main idea and links to your next paragraph. A useful acronym is TEEL (topic sentence, expand, explain, link).
Many writers struggle linking paragraphs together and fall back on connecting words such as however, therefore, accordingly. These words are useful, but in my opinion are often overused. If your writing is well structured you can often delete several uses of however or therefore without any loss of meaning or flow. Try it and see. Or you could use simpler words, such as also, and, so.
Another way of linking is to use pronouns such as they and it to refer back to the noun in the previous sentence. This works as long as it's obvious what they or it refer to.
posted by Unknown @ 11:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home