[MUSIC] The concept of paragraphing
differs in different countries. For example, the French rhetorical tradition does not differentiate
paragraphs according to specific types. By contrast, the Scandinavian
languages have only one word for both paragraph and section. The Russian does not differentiate
between these two nouns, signifies the paragraph's relative lack
of importance as carrier of meaning. In English, the paragraph is a self
contained unit of a discourse in writing, dealing with a particular idea. Just as a independent clause
should express one thought, and the sentence either one or two. A paragraph should hold and
express one unit of many. This function is so precise that the
complete English paragraph never expresses an incomplete meaning, or a meaning
that deals with more than one subject. Those readers who have been educated
in the Anglo-American tradition expect to be able to read each
paragraph in one reading. So what constitutes a paragraph? The answer is coherence. The paragraph must cohere. The world cohere comes from Latin,
where it means to stick or cling. The paragraph must hold together
logically as one meaningful unit. A paragraph is coherent when the reader
can move easily from one sentence to the next, and
read the paragraph as an integrated whole rather than a series
of separate sentences. Writers can make paragraphs coherent
by weaving sentences together with such connecting devices as pronouns, parallel structures, contrast, and
different transitional markers. The coherent determinant is
always the topic sentence, which tells the reader what the paragraph
will discuss, include, or explore. Examples of typical topic
sentences are this. Learning allows us to discover
what kind of person we can be. The reader expects to read more,
or all, of the details. Motion is always important
to the human condition. Following a paragraph on
the concept of motion, the reader expects to read about how
motion affects the human condition. The results in Table 1 are in
line with this paper's argument. The reader expects to
read the findings and possibly a discussion of those findings. To help you better understand
the concept of paragraphing, I suggest you organize the following
six sentences into a logical paragraph. Even if you know nothing
about either meteorology or paragraphing, the exercise is easy. The sentence that frames the entire
paragraph is number six, because the paragraph is about wind. And sentence number six defines wind,
and thus is the topic sentence. But where does the wind come from? What is it's source? These questions lead to number four, which
gives us the term pressure difference. We then know that the next
sentence must be two. Which begins with this pressure
difference, because this phrase must refer to something in either the same sentence
or the immediately preceding sentence. Number two ends with pressure gradient, leaving a choice between one and
five, both of which begin with it. The only choice here is number five,
because it defines the term and it defines isobars. A word that would not make sense in number one without the definition of
this concept in number five. These choices lead us to number three,
which elegantly wraps up the paragraph and returns us to where we
started with the wind. Clearly stated topic sentences, an obvious
organizational pattern, statements of topic and purpose, and headings
which indicate the visions of the text. These are all clues that facilitate
a reader's integration of details in the text into a coherent whole.
