how many body paragraphs should a personal essay have

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How Many Paragraphs Should an Essay Have?

• 6-minute read
• 19th May 2023

You have an essay to write. You’ve researched the topic and crafted a strong thesis statement . Now it’s time to open the laptop and start tapping away on the keyboard. You know the required word count, but you’re unsure of one thing: How many paragraphs should you have in the essay? Gee, it would’ve been nice if your professor had specified that, huh?

No worries, friend, because in this post, we’ll provide a guide to how many paragraphs an essay should have . Generally, the number of paragraphs will depend on how many words and how many supporting details you need (more on that later). We’ll also explore the concept of paragraphs if you’re wondering what they’re all about. And remember, paragraphs serve a purpose. You can’t submit an essay without using them!

What Is a Paragraph?

You likely know what a paragraph is, but can you define it properly in plain English? Don’t feel bad if that question made you shake your head. Off the top of our heads, many of us can’t explain what a paragraph is .

A paragraph comprises at least five sentences about a particular topic. A paragraph must begin with a well-crafted topic sentence , which is then followed by ideas that support that sentence. To move the essay forward, the paragraph should flow well, and the sentences should be relevant.

Why Are Paragraphs Important?

Paragraphs expand on points you make about a topic, painting a vivid picture for the reader. Paragraphs break down information into chunks, which are easier to read than one giant, uninterrupted body of text. If your essay doesn’t use paragraphs, it likely won’t earn a good grade!

 How Many Paragraphs Are in an Essay?

As mentioned, the number of paragraphs will depend on the word count and the quantity of supporting ideas required. However, if you have to write at least 1,000 words, you should aim for at least five paragraphs. Every essay should have an introduction and a conclusion. The reader needs to get a basic introduction to the topic and understand your thesis statement. They must also see key takeaway points at the end of the essay.

As a rule, a five-paragraph essay would look like this:

• Introduction (with thesis statement)
• Main idea 1 (with supporting details)
• Main idea 2 (with supporting details)
• Main idea 3 (with supporting details)

Your supporting details should include material (such as quotations or facts) from credible sources when writing the main idea paragraphs.

If you think your essay could benefit from having more than five paragraphs, add them! Just make sure they’re relevant to the topic.

Professors don’t care so much about the number of paragraphs; they want you to satisfy the minimum word requirement. Assignment rubrics rarely state the number of required paragraphs. It will be up to you to decide how many to write, and we urge you to research the assigned topic before writing the essay. Your main ideas from the research will generate most of the paragraphs.

When Should I Start a New Paragraph?

Surprisingly, some students aren’t aware that they should break up some of the paragraphs in their essays . You need to start new paragraphs to keep your reader engaged.

As well as starting a new paragraph after the introduction and another for the conclusion, you should do so when you’re introducing a new idea or presenting contrasting information.

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Starting a paragraph often involves using transitional words or phrases to signal to the reader that you’re presenting a new idea. Failing to use these cues may cause confusion for the reader and undermine your essay’s coherence.

Let’s consider examples of transitional words and phrases in action in a conclusion. Note that the essay is about too much mobile device screen time and that transitional words and phrases can occur later in a paragraph too:

Thanks to “In conclusion” and “Additionally,” the reader clearly knows that they are now in the conclusion stage. They can also follow the logic and development of the essay more easily.

How Do I Know Whether I Have Enough Paragraphs?

While no magic number exists for how many paragraphs you need, you should know when you have enough to satisfy the requirements of the assignment. It helps if you can answer yes to the following questions:

• Does my essay have both an introduction and a conclusion?
• Have I provided enough main ideas with supporting details, including quotes and cited information?
• Does my essay develop the thesis statement?
• Does my essay adequately inform the reader about the topic?
• Have I provided at least one takeaway for the reader?

 Conclusion

Professors aren’t necessarily looking for a specific number of paragraphs in an essay; it’s the word count that matters. You should see the word count as a guide for a suitable number of paragraphs. As a rule, five paragraphs should suffice for a 1,000-word essay. As long as you have an introduction and a conclusion and provide enough supporting details for the main ideas in your body paragraphs, you should be good to go.

Remember to start a new paragraph when introducing new ideas or presenting contrasting information. Your reader needs to be able to follow the essay throughout, and a single, unbroken block of text would be difficult to read. Transitional words and phrases help start new paragraphs, so don’t forget to use them!

As with any writing, we always recommend proofreading your essay after you’ve finished it. This step will help to detect typos, extra spacing, and grammatical errors. A second pair of eyes is always useful, so we recommend asking our proofreading experts to review your essay . They’ll correct your grammar, ensure perfect spelling, and offer suggestions to improve your essay. You can even submit a 500-word document for free!

1. What is a paragraph and what is its purpose?

A paragraph is a group of sentences that expand on a single idea. The purpose of a paragraph is to introduce an idea and then develop it with supporting details.

2. What are the benefits of paragraphs?

Paragraphs make your essay easy to read by providing structure and flow. They let you transition from one idea to another. New paragraphs allow you to tell your reader that you’ve covered one point and are moving on to the next.

3. How many paragraphs does a typical essay have?

An essay of at least 1,000 words usually has five paragraphs. It’s best to use the required word count as a guide to the number of paragraphs you’ll need.

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9.2 Writing Body Paragraphs

Learning objectives.

• Select primary support related to your thesis.
• Support your topic sentences.

If your thesis gives the reader a roadmap to your essay, then body paragraphs should closely follow that map. The reader should be able to predict what follows your introductory paragraph by simply reading the thesis statement.

The body paragraphs present the evidence you have gathered to confirm your thesis. Before you begin to support your thesis in the body, you must find information from a variety of sources that support and give credit to what you are trying to prove.

Select Primary Support for Your Thesis

Without primary support, your argument is not likely to be convincing. Primary support can be described as the major points you choose to expand on your thesis. It is the most important information you select to argue for your point of view. Each point you choose will be incorporated into the topic sentence for each body paragraph you write. Your primary supporting points are further supported by supporting details within the paragraphs.

Remember that a worthy argument is backed by examples. In order to construct a valid argument, good writers conduct lots of background research and take careful notes. They also talk to people knowledgeable about a topic in order to understand its implications before writing about it.

Identify the Characteristics of Good Primary Support

In order to fulfill the requirements of good primary support, the information you choose must meet the following standards:

• Be specific. The main points you make about your thesis and the examples you use to expand on those points need to be specific. Use specific examples to provide the evidence and to build upon your general ideas. These types of examples give your reader something narrow to focus on, and if used properly, they leave little doubt about your claim. General examples, while they convey the necessary information, are not nearly as compelling or useful in writing because they are too obvious and typical.
• Be relevant to the thesis. Primary support is considered strong when it relates directly to the thesis. Primary support should show, explain, or prove your main argument without delving into irrelevant details. When faced with lots of information that could be used to prove your thesis, you may think you need to include it all in your body paragraphs. But effective writers resist the temptation to lose focus. Choose your examples wisely by making sure they directly connect to your thesis.
• Be detailed. Remember that your thesis, while specific, should not be very detailed. The body paragraphs are where you develop the discussion that a thorough essay requires. Using detailed support shows readers that you have considered all the facts and chosen only the most precise details to enhance your point of view.

Prewrite to Identify Primary Supporting Points for a Thesis Statement

Recall that when you prewrite you essentially make a list of examples or reasons why you support your stance. Stemming from each point, you further provide details to support those reasons. After prewriting, you are then able to look back at the information and choose the most compelling pieces you will use in your body paragraphs.

Choose one of the following working thesis statements. On a separate sheet of paper, write for at least five minutes using one of the prewriting techniques you learned in Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

• Unleashed dogs on city streets are a dangerous nuisance.
• Students cheat for many different reasons.
• Drug use among teens and young adults is a problem.
• The most important change that should occur at my college or university is ____________________________________________.

Select the Most Effective Primary Supporting Points for a Thesis Statement

After you have prewritten about your working thesis statement, you may have generated a lot of information, which may be edited out later. Remember that your primary support must be relevant to your thesis. Remind yourself of your main argument, and delete any ideas that do not directly relate to it. Omitting unrelated ideas ensures that you will use only the most convincing information in your body paragraphs. Choose at least three of only the most compelling points. These will serve as the topic sentences for your body paragraphs.

Refer to the previous exercise and select three of your most compelling reasons to support the thesis statement. Remember that the points you choose must be specific and relevant to the thesis. The statements you choose will be your primary support points, and you will later incorporate them into the topic sentences for the body paragraphs.

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

When you support your thesis, you are revealing evidence. Evidence includes anything that can help support your stance. The following are the kinds of evidence you will encounter as you conduct your research:

• Facts. Facts are the best kind of evidence to use because they often cannot be disputed. They can support your stance by providing background information on or a solid foundation for your point of view. However, some facts may still need explanation. For example, the sentence “The most populated state in the United States is California” is a pure fact, but it may require some explanation to make it relevant to your specific argument.
• Judgments. Judgments are conclusions drawn from the given facts. Judgments are more credible than opinions because they are founded upon careful reasoning and examination of a topic.
• Testimony. Testimony consists of direct quotations from either an eyewitness or an expert witness. An eyewitness is someone who has direct experience with a subject; he adds authenticity to an argument based on facts. An expert witness is a person who has extensive experience with a topic. This person studies the facts and provides commentary based on either facts or judgments, or both. An expert witness adds authority and credibility to an argument.
• Personal observation. Personal observation is similar to testimony, but personal observation consists of your testimony. It reflects what you know to be true because you have experiences and have formed either opinions or judgments about them. For instance, if you are one of five children and your thesis states that being part of a large family is beneficial to a child’s social development, you could use your own experience to support your thesis.

Writing at Work

In any job where you devise a plan, you will need to support the steps that you lay out. This is an area in which you would incorporate primary support into your writing. Choosing only the most specific and relevant information to expand upon the steps will ensure that your plan appears well-thought-out and precise.

You can consult a vast pool of resources to gather support for your stance. Citing relevant information from reliable sources ensures that your reader will take you seriously and consider your assertions. Use any of the following sources for your essay: newspapers or news organization websites, magazines, encyclopedias, and scholarly journals, which are periodicals that address topics in a specialized field.

Choose Supporting Topic Sentences

Each body paragraph contains a topic sentence that states one aspect of your thesis and then expands upon it. Like the thesis statement, each topic sentence should be specific and supported by concrete details, facts, or explanations.

Each body paragraph should comprise the following elements.

topic sentence + supporting details (examples, reasons, or arguments)

As you read in Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , topic sentences indicate the location and main points of the basic arguments of your essay. These sentences are vital to writing your body paragraphs because they always refer back to and support your thesis statement. Topic sentences are linked to the ideas you have introduced in your thesis, thus reminding readers what your essay is about. A paragraph without a clearly identified topic sentence may be unclear and scattered, just like an essay without a thesis statement.

Unless your teacher instructs otherwise, you should include at least three body paragraphs in your essay. A five-paragraph essay, including the introduction and conclusion, is commonly the standard for exams and essay assignments.

Consider the following the thesis statement:

Author J.D. Salinger relied primarily on his personal life and belief system as the foundation for the themes in the majority of his works.

The following topic sentence is a primary support point for the thesis. The topic sentence states exactly what the controlling idea of the paragraph is. Later, you will see the writer immediately provide support for the sentence.

Salinger, a World War II veteran, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, a disorder that influenced themes in many of his works.

In Note 9.19 “Exercise 2” , you chose three of your most convincing points to support the thesis statement you selected from the list. Take each point and incorporate it into a topic sentence for each body paragraph.

Supporting point 1: ____________________________________________

Topic sentence: ____________________________________________

Supporting point 2: ____________________________________________

Supporting point 3: ____________________________________________

Draft Supporting Detail Sentences for Each Primary Support Sentence

After deciding which primary support points you will use as your topic sentences, you must add details to clarify and demonstrate each of those points. These supporting details provide examples, facts, or evidence that support the topic sentence.

The writer drafts possible supporting detail sentences for each primary support sentence based on the thesis statement:

Thesis statement: Unleashed dogs on city streets are a dangerous nuisance.

Supporting point 1: Dogs can scare cyclists and pedestrians.

Supporting details:

• Cyclists are forced to zigzag on the road.
• School children panic and turn wildly on their bikes.
• People who are walking at night freeze in fear.

Supporting point 2:

Loose dogs are traffic hazards.

• Dogs in the street make people swerve their cars.
• To avoid dogs, drivers run into other cars or pedestrians.
• Children coaxing dogs across busy streets create danger.

Supporting point 3: Unleashed dogs damage gardens.

• They step on flowers and vegetables.
• They destroy hedges by urinating on them.
• They mess up lawns by digging holes.

The following paragraph contains supporting detail sentences for the primary support sentence (the topic sentence), which is underlined.

Salinger, a World War II veteran, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, a disorder that influenced the themes in many of his works. He did not hide his mental anguish over the horrors of war and once told his daughter, “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose, no matter how long you live.” His short story “A Perfect Day for a Bananafish” details a day in the life of a WWII veteran who was recently released from an army hospital for psychiatric problems. The man acts questionably with a little girl he meets on the beach before he returns to his hotel room and commits suicide. Another short story, “For Esmé – with Love and Squalor,” is narrated by a traumatized soldier who sparks an unusual relationship with a young girl he meets before he departs to partake in D-Day. Finally, in Salinger’s only novel, The Catcher in the Rye , he continues with the theme of posttraumatic stress, though not directly related to war. From a rest home for the mentally ill, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield narrates the story of his nervous breakdown following the death of his younger brother.

Using the three topic sentences you composed for the thesis statement in Note 9.18 “Exercise 1” , draft at least three supporting details for each point.

Thesis statement: ____________________________________________

Primary supporting point 1: ____________________________________________

Supporting details: ____________________________________________

Primary supporting point 2: ____________________________________________

Primary supporting point 3: ____________________________________________

You have the option of writing your topic sentences in one of three ways. You can state it at the beginning of the body paragraph, or at the end of the paragraph, or you do not have to write it at all. This is called an implied topic sentence. An implied topic sentence lets readers form the main idea for themselves. For beginning writers, it is best to not use implied topic sentences because it makes it harder to focus your writing. Your instructor may also want to clearly identify the sentences that support your thesis. For more information on the placement of thesis statements and implied topic statements, see Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

Print out the first draft of your essay and use a highlighter to mark your topic sentences in the body paragraphs. Make sure they are clearly stated and accurately present your paragraphs, as well as accurately reflect your thesis. If your topic sentence contains information that does not exist in the rest of the paragraph, rewrite it to more accurately match the rest of the paragraph.

Key Takeaways

• Your body paragraphs should closely follow the path set forth by your thesis statement.
• Strong body paragraphs contain evidence that supports your thesis.
• Primary support comprises the most important points you use to support your thesis.
• Strong primary support is specific, detailed, and relevant to the thesis.
• Prewriting helps you determine your most compelling primary support.
• Evidence includes facts, judgments, testimony, and personal observation.
• Reliable sources may include newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books, encyclopedias, and firsthand testimony.
• A topic sentence presents one point of your thesis statement while the information in the rest of the paragraph supports that point.
• A body paragraph comprises a topic sentence plus supporting details.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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4.13: Writing a Personal Essay

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Learning Objectives

• Describe techniques for writing an effective personal essay

How to Write a Personal Essay

One particular and common kind of narrative essay is the personal narrative essay. Many of you have already written at least one of these – in order to get to college. The personal essay is a narrative essay focused on you. Typically, you write about events or people in your life that taught you important life lessons. These events should have changed you somehow. From this choice will emerge the theme (the main point) of your story. Then you can follow these steps:

• Once you identify the event, you will write down what happened. Just brainstorm (also called freewriting). Focus on the actual event. You do not need to provide a complete build-up to it. For example, if you are telling a story about an experience at camp, you do not need to provide readers with a history of my camp experiences, nor do you need to explain how you got there, what we ate each day, how long it lasted, etc. Readers need enough information to understand the event. So, you do not need to provide information about my entire summer if the event only lasts a couple of days.
• Use descriptions/vivid details.
• “Nothing moved but a pair of squirrels chasing each other back and forth on the telephone wires. I followed one in my sight. Finally, it stopped for a moment and I fired.”
• The verbs are all in active voice creating a sense of immediacy: moved, followed, stopped, fired.
• Passive voice uses the verb “to be” along with an action verb: had been aiming, was exhausted.
• Develop your characters. Even though the “characters” in your story are real people, your readers won’t get to know them unless you describe them, present their personalities, and give them physical presence.
• Use dialogue. Dialogue helps readers get to know the characters in your story, infuses the story with life, and offers a variation from description and explanation. When writing dialogue, you may not remember exactly what was said in the past, so be true to the person being represented and come as close to the actual language the person uses as possible. Dialogue is indented with each person speaking as its own paragraph. The paragraph ends when that person is done speaking and any following explanation or continuing action ends. (If your characters speak a language other than English, feel free to include that in your narrative, but provide a translation for your English-speaking readers.)
• Be consistent in your point of view. Remember, if it is a personal narrative, you are telling the story, so it should be in first person. Students often worry about whether or not they are allowed to use “I.” It is impossible to write a personal essay without using “I”!
• Write the story in a consistent verb tense (almost always past tense). It doesn’t work to try to write it in the present tense since it already happened. Make sure you stay in the past tense.

Sample Personal Statement

One type of narrative essay you may have reason to write is a Personal Statement.

Many colleges and universities ask for a Personal Statement Essay for students who are applying for admission, to transfer, or for scholarships.

Generally, a Personal Statement asks you to respond to a specific prompt, most often asking you to describe a significant life event, a personality trait, or a goal or principle that motivates or inspires you. Personal Statements are essentially narrative essays with a particular focus on the writer’s personal life.

The following essay was responding to the prompt: “Write about an experience that made you aware of a skill or strength you possess.” As you read, pay attention to the way the writer gets your attention with a strong opening, how he uses vivid details and a chronological narrative to tell his story, and how he links back to the prompt in the conclusion.

Sample Student Essay

Alen Abramyan Professor X English 1101-209 2/5/2013

In the Middle of Nowhere Fighting Adversity

A three-punch combination had me seeing stars. Blood started to rush down my nose. The Russian trainers quietly whispered to one another. I knew right away that my nose was broken. Was this the end of my journey; or was I about to face adversity?

Ever since I was seven years old, I trained myself in, “The Art of Boxing.” While most of the kids were out playing fun games and hanging out with their friends, I was in a damp, sweat-filled gym. My path was set to be a difficult one. Blood, sweat, and, tears were going to be an everyday occurrence.

At a very young age I learned the meaning of hard work and dedication. Most kids jumped from one activity to the next. Some quit because it was too hard; others quit because they were too bored. My father pointed this out to me on many occasions. Adults would ask my father, ” why do you let your son box? It’s such a dangerous sport, he could get hurt. My father always replied, “Everyone is going to get hurt in their lives, physically, mentally and emotionally. I’m making sure he’s ready for the challenges he’s going to face as a man. I always felt strong after hearing my father speak that way about me. I was a boy being shaped into a man, what a great feeling it was.

Year after year, I participated in boxing tournaments across the U.S. As the years went by, the work ethic and strength of character my father and coaches instilled in me, were starting to take shape. I began applying the hard work and dedication I learned in boxing, to my everyday life. I realized that when times were tough and challenges presented themselves, I wouldn’t back down, I would become stronger. This confidence I had in myself, gave me the strength to pursue my boxing career in Russia.

I traveled to Russia to compete in Amateur Boxing. Tournament after tournament I came closer to my goal of making the Russian Olympic Boxing team. After successfully winning the Kaliningrad regional tournament, I began training for the Northwest Championships. This would include boxers from St. Petersburg, Pskov, Kursk and many other powerful boxing cities.

We had to prepare for a tough tournament, and that’s what we did. While sparring one week before the tournament, I was caught by a strong punch combination to the nose. I knew right away it was serious. Blood began rushing down my face, as I noticed the coaches whispering to each other. They walked into my corner and examined my nose,” yeah, it’s broken,” Yuri Ivonovich yelled out. I was asked to clean up and to meet them in their office. I walked into the Boxing Federation office after a quick shower. I knew right away, they wanted to replace me for the upcoming tournament. “We’re investing a lot of money on you boxers and we expect good results. Why should we risk taking you with a broken nose?” Yuri Ivonovich asked me. I replied, “I traveled half-way around the world to be here, this injury isn’t a problem for me.” And by the look on my face they were convinced, they handed me my train ticket and wished me luck.

The train came to a screeching halt, shaking all the passengers awake. I glanced out my window, “Welcome to Cherepovets,” the sign read. In the background I saw a horrific skyline of smokestacks, coughing out thick black smoke. Arriving in the city, we went straight to the weigh ins. Hundreds of boxers, all from many cities were there. The brackets were set up shortly after the weigh ins. In the Super Heavyweight division, I found out I had 4 fights to compete in, each increasing in difficulty. My first match, I made sure not a punch would land; this was true for the next two fights. Winning all three 6-0, 8-0 and 7-0 respectively. It looked like I was close to winning the whole tournament. For the finals I was to fight the National Olympic Hope Champion.

The night before the finals was coincidentally the 200th anniversary of the city. All night by my hotel, I heard screams of laughter and partying. I couldn’t sleep a wink. The morning of the fight I was exhausted but anxious. I stepped into the ring knowing that I was tired. I fell behind in points quickly in the first round. I felt as if I were dreaming, with no control of the situation. I was going along for the ride and it wasn’t pleasant. At the end of the second round, the coach informed me that I was far behind. “?You’re asleep in there,” he yelled out to me, confirming how I felt. I knew this was my last chance; I had to give it my all. I mustered up enough strength to have an amazing round. It was as if I stepped out and a fresh boxer stepped in. I glanced at my coaches and see a look of approval. No matter the outcome, I felt that I had defeated adversity. My opponent’s hand was raised , he won a close decision, 6-5. After I got back to my hotel, I remembered Yuri Ivonovich telling me they expected good results. “How were my results,” I asked myself. In my mind, the results were great, with a broken nose and with no sleep, I came one point shy of defeating the National Olympic Hope Champion.

Even from a very young age, I knew that when my back was against the wall and adversity was knocking on my door, I would never back down. I became a stronger person, a trait my family made sure I would carry into my adult years. No matter what I’m striving for; getting into a University; receiving a scholarship; or applying for a job, I can proudly say to myself, I am Alen Abramyan and adversity is no match for me.

Link to Learning

Sandra Cisneros offers an example of a narrative essay in “Only Daughter” that captures her sense of her Chicana-Mexican heritage as the only daughter in a family of seven children.

Do Personal Essays have Thesis Statements?

While many personal essays include a direct statement of the thesis, in some personal essays the thesis may be implied rather than stated outright.

Imagine, for example, that in your personal essay you decide to write about the way someone influenced you. The influential individual could be a relative, a friend or classmate, an employer or a teacher. As you shape your essay, you would not simply assemble a collection of miscellaneous observations about the person; instead, you would be selective and focus on details about this person that show his or her impact upon you.

Let us say that the person who influenced you is a grandparent. You may know a lot about this individual: personality traits, family and marital history, medical history, educational background, work experience, military experience, political and religious beliefs, hobbies, tastes in music, etc. But as you shape your essay about how this individual affected you, you wouldn’t try to catalog all that you know. Instead, you would try to create a dominant impression by including details that guide your reader toward the idea that is central to the essay.

For example, if you developed certain habits and attitudes as you and your grandparent worked together on a project, that experience might provide the focus for the essay. If you chose details consistent with that focus, then you wouldn’t need to state that this was the point of the essay. Your readers would understand that that was the governing idea based on the details you had so carefully chosen.

Whether the thesis is stated outright or implied, then, the personal essay will have a governing idea—an idea that is “in charge” of what you decide to include in the essay in terms of content, vocabulary, sentence structure, and tone. In short, the personal essay may not have a thesis statement, but it will have a thesis.

Consider a personal essay in which a student was asked to write about a person she admired, and she wrote about her cousin. She wrote:

• I admired my cousin’s decision to enlist because she had to withstand criticism from people who thought women shouldn’t be in the army and because in basic training she had to stand up to physical and mental challenges that I don’t think I could face.

The thesis statement provides quite a lot of guidance for both writing and reading the essay. Writer and reader are equally able to see what the subject of the essay is and what is being stated about the subject, and both writer and reader can see how the essay should be organized. No matter how many body paragraphs there are, this thesis implies that the paper will be divided into two sections. One section will group together the paragraphs on this topic: cousin “had to withstand criticism from people who thought women shouldn’t be in the army.” Another section will group together the paragraphs on this second topic: “in basic training she had to stand up to physical and mental challenges.”

Are Narratives Persuasive?

In a personal essay, you may not think of your thesis as “arguable” in the same way as a claim in a persuasive essay would be arguable, but in fact, you can think of it as something that should need to be demonstrated—backed up through explanations and illustrations. Usually, the idea that should be demonstrated is that you are a thoughtful, reflective person who has learned from the events and people in your life.

If the thesis does not need to be demonstrated, then there may not be much purpose in writing the essay. For, example, a statement that “George W. Bush was the forty-third president” or the statement that “Senior proms are exciting” would not be considered arguable by most people and likely would not spark a reader’s interest and make them want to keep reading.

On the other hand, the thesis statements below would need to be explained and illustrated. In that sense, these personal essay thesis statements are equivalent to claims that are “arguable.”

• The evening was nearly ruined because parents acting as dress-code vigilantes threw several people out of the prom.
• My team spent hours planning the prom and managed to head off a repeat of the after-prom drinking that caused some parents to question whether the prom should be held this year.
• Everyone was able to attend the prom proudly because our prom committee got several stores to loan outfits to make certain everyone would feel like they fit in.
• I opted to attend an alternative prom because the principal refused to allow a same-sex couple to attend.

Keep in mind that the actions or events in your essay do not have to make you look heroic. You could write a convincing and powerful essay about how you attended the school-sponsored prom, even though the principal refused to allow a same-sex couple to attend. Your essay, in this case, might, for example, focus on your regret over your decision and your subsequent understanding of how you think you can best challenge the status quo in the future. In other words, you can write an effective personal essay about a moment of regret.

When writing a personal essay for an application of some kind (scholarship, internship, graduate school), remember that the ultimate purpose of the essay is to make you, the essay writer and applicant, look good. That doesn’t mean that you need to describe you doing great things. If your personal essay is all about your grandfather and what an amazing role model and person he was, you still need to think about how your essay can make you (and not just your grandfather) look good. One way to make yourself look good is to make clear that you are a thoughtful, reflective person (and someone smart enough to learn from a man like your grandfather).

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/20435

Contributors and Attributions

• Narrative Essay. Provided by : Excelsior OWL. Located at : https://owl.excelsior.edu/rhetorical-styles/narrative-essay/narrative-essay-see-it-across-the-disciplines/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Narrative Essays. Authored by : Marianne Botos, Lynn McClelland, Stephanie Polliard, Pamela Osback . Located at : https://pvccenglish.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/eng-101-inside-pages-proof2-no-pro.pdf . Project : Horse of a Different Color: English Composition and Rhetoric . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Sample Narrative Essay. Provided by : Georgia State University. Located at : gsuideas.org/SCC/Narration/Sample%20Narrative%20Essay%20Personal%20Statement.html. Project : Writing For Success. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Writing a Narrative Essay. Provided by : Boundless. Located at : courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-writing/chapter/types-of-rhetorical-modes/. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of person writing on sticky notes. Authored by : Nappiness. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : pixabay.com/photos/brainstorming-business-professional-441010/. License : Other . License Terms : pixabay.com/service/terms/#license
• Do Personal Essays have Thesis Statements?. Provided by : Radford University. Located at : https://lcubbison.pressbooks.com/chapter/core-101-personal-essay-assignment/ . Project : Radford University Core Handbook. License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

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How to Write a Body Paragraph for a College Essay  

January 29, 2024

No matter the discipline, college success requires mastering several academic basics, including the body paragraph. This article will provide tips on drafting and editing a strong body paragraph before examining several body paragraph examples. Before we look at how to start a body paragraph and how to write a body paragraph for a college essay (or other writing assignment), let’s define what exactly a body paragraph is.

What is a Body Paragraph?

Simply put, a body paragraph consists of everything in an academic essay that does not constitute the introduction and conclusion. It makes up everything in between. In a five-paragraph, thesis-style essay (which most high schoolers encounter before heading off to college), there are three body paragraphs. Longer essays with more complex arguments will include many more body paragraphs.

We might correlate body paragraphs with bodily appendages—say, a leg. Both operate in a somewhat isolated way to perform specific operations, yet are integral to creating a cohesive, functioning whole. A leg helps the body sit, walk, and run. Like legs, body paragraphs work to move an essay along, by leading the reader through several convincing ideas. Together, these ideas, sometimes called topics, or points, work to prove an overall argument, called the essay’s thesis.

If you compared an essay on Kant’s theory of beauty to an essay on migratory birds, you’d notice that the body paragraphs differ drastically. However, on closer inspection, you’d probably find that they included many of the same key components. Most body paragraphs will include specific, detailed evidence, an analysis of the evidence, a conclusion drawn by the author, and several tie-ins to the larger ideas at play. They’ll also include transitions and citations leading the reader to source material. We’ll go into more detail on these components soon. First, let’s see if you’ve organized your essay so that you’ll know how to start a body paragraph.

How to Start a Body Paragraph

It can be tempting to start writing your college essay as soon as you sit down at your desk. The sooner begun, the sooner done, right? I’d recommend resisting that itch. Instead, pull up a blank document on your screen and make an outline. There are numerous reasons to make an outline, and most involve helping you stay on track. This is especially true of longer college papers, like the 60+ page dissertation some seniors are required to write. Even with regular writing assignments with a page count between 4-10, an outline will help you visualize your argumentation strategy. Moreover, it will help you order your key points and their relevant evidence from most to least convincing. This in turn will determine the order of your body paragraphs.

The most convincing sequence of body paragraphs will depend entirely on your paper’s subject.  Let’s say you’re writing about Penelope’s success in outwitting male counterparts in The Odyssey . You may want to begin with Penelope’s weaving, the most obvious way in which Penelope dupes her suitors. You can end with Penelope’s ingenious way of outsmarting her own husband. Because this evidence is more ambiguous it will require a more nuanced analysis. Thus, it’ll work best as your final body paragraph, after readers have already been convinced of more digestible evidence. If in doubt, keep your body paragraph order chronological.

It can be worthwhile to consider your topic from multiple perspectives. You may decide to include a body paragraph that sets out to consider and refute an opposing point to your thesis. This type of body paragraph will often appear near the end of the essay. It works to erase any lingering doubts readers may have had, and requires strong rhetorical techniques.

How to Start a Body Paragraph, Continued

Once you’ve determined which key points will best support your argument and in what order, draft an introduction. This is a crucial step towards writing a body paragraph. First, it will set the tone for the rest of your paper. Second, it will require you to articulate your thesis statement in specific, concise wording. Highlight or bold your thesis statement, so you can refer back to it quickly. You should be looking at your thesis throughout the drafting of your body paragraphs.

Finally, make sure that your introduction indicates which key points you’ll be covering in your body paragraphs, and in what order. While this level of organization might seem like overkill, it will indicate to the reader that your entire paper is minutely thought-out. It will boost your reader’s confidence going in. They’ll feel reassured and open to your thought process if they can see that it follows a clear path.

Now that you have an essay outline and introduction, you’re ready to draft your body paragraphs.

How to Draft a Body Paragraph

At this point, you know your body paragraph topic, the key point you’re trying to make, and you’ve gathered your evidence. The next thing to do is write! The words highlighted in bold below comprise the main components that will make up your body paragraph. (You’ll notice in the body paragraph examples below that the order of these components is flexible.)

Start with a topic sentence . This will indicate the main point you plan to make that will work to support your overall thesis. Your topic sentence also alerts the reader to the change in topic from the last paragraph to the current one. In making this new topic known, you’ll want to create a transition from the last topic to this one.

Transitions appear in nearly every paragraph of a college essay, apart from the introduction. They create a link between disparate ideas. (For example, if your transition comes at the end of paragraph 4, you won’t need a second transition at the beginning of paragraph 5.) The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center has a page devoted to Developing Strategic Transitions . Likewise, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Writing Center offers help on paragraph transitions .

How to Draft a Body Paragraph for a College Essay ( Continued)

With the topic sentence written, you’ll need to prove your point through tangible evidence. This requires several sentences with various components. You’ll want to provide more context , going into greater detail to situate the reader within the topic. Next, you’ll provide evidence , often in the form of a quote, facts, or data, and supply a source citation . Citing your source is paramount. Sources indicate that your evidence is empirical and objective. It implies that your evidence is knowledge shared by others in the academic community. Sometimes you’ll want to provide multiple pieces of evidence, if the evidence is similar and can be grouped together.

After providing evidence, you must provide an interpretation and analysis of this evidence. In other words, use rhetorical techniques to paraphrase what your evidence seems to suggest. Break down the evidence further and explain and summarize it in new words. Don’t simply skip to your conclusion. Your evidence should never stand for itself. Why? Because your interpretation and analysis allow you to exhibit original, analytical, and critical thinking skills.

Depending on what evidence you’re using, you may repeat some of these components in the same body paragraph. This might look like: more context + further evidence + increased interpretation and analysis . All this will add up to proving and reaffirming your body paragraph’s main point . To do so, conclude your body paragraph by reformulating your thesis statement in light of the information you’ve given. I recommend comparing your original thesis statement to your paragraph’s concluding statement. Do they align? Does your body paragraph create a sound connection to the overall academic argument? If not, you’ll need to fix this issue when you edit your body paragraph.

How to Edit a Body Paragraph

As you go over each body paragraph of your college essay, keep this short checklist in mind.

• Consistency in your argument: If your key points don’t add up to a cogent argument, you’ll need to identify where the inconsistency lies. Often it lies in interpretation and analysis. You may need to improve the way you articulate this component. Try to think like a lawyer: how can you use this evidence to your advantage? If that doesn’t work, you may need to find new evidence. As a last resort, amend your thesis statement.
• Language-level persuasion. Use a broad vocabulary. Vary your sentence structure. Don’t repeat the same words too often, which can induce mental fatigue in the reader. I suggest keeping an online dictionary open on your browser. I find Merriam-Webster user-friendly, since it allows you to toggle between definitions and synonyms. It also includes up-to-date example sentences. Also, don’t forget the power of rhetorical devices .
• Does your writing flow naturally from one idea to the next, or are there jarring breaks? The editing stage is a great place to polish transitions and reinforce the structure as a whole.

Our first body paragraph example comes from the College Transitions article “ How to Write the AP Lang Argument Essay .” Here’s the prompt: Write an essay that argues your position on the value of striving for perfection.

Here’s the example thesis statement, taken from the introduction paragraph: “Striving for perfection can only lead us to shortchange ourselves. Instead, we should value learning, growth, and creativity and not worry whether we are first or fifth best.” Now let’s see how this writer builds an argument against perfection through one main point across two body paragraphs. (While this writer has split this idea into two paragraphs, one to address a problem and one to provide an alternative resolution, it could easily be combined into one paragraph.)

“Students often feel the need to be perfect in their classes, and this can cause students to struggle or stop making an effort in class. In elementary and middle school, for example, I was very nervous about public speaking. When I had to give a speech, my voice would shake, and I would turn very red. My teachers always told me “relax!” and I got Bs on Cs on my speeches. As a result, I put more pressure on myself to do well, spending extra time making my speeches perfect and rehearsing late at night at home. But this pressure only made me more nervous, and I started getting stomach aches before speaking in public.

“Once I got to high school, however, I started doing YouTube make-up tutorials with a friend. We made videos just for fun, and laughed when we made mistakes or said something silly. Only then, when I wasn’t striving to be perfect, did I get more comfortable with public speaking.”

Body Paragraph Example 1 Dissected

In this body paragraph example, the writer uses their personal experience as evidence against the value of striving for perfection. The writer sets up this example with a topic sentence that acts as a transition from the introduction. They also situate the reader in the classroom. The evidence takes the form of emotion and physical reactions to the pressure of public speaking (nervousness, shaking voice, blushing). Evidence also takes the form of poor results (mediocre grades). Rather than interpret the evidence from an analytical perspective, the writer produces more evidence to underline their point. (This method works fine for a narrative-style essay.) It’s clear that working harder to be perfect further increased the student’s nausea.

The writer proves their point in the second paragraph, through a counter-example. The main point is that improvement comes more naturally when the pressure is lifted; when amusement is possible and mistakes aren’t something to fear. This point ties back in with the thesis, that “we should value learning, growth, and creativity” over perfection.

This second body paragraph example comes from the College Transitions article “ How to Write the AP Lang Rhetorical Analysis Essay .” Here’s an abridged version of the prompt: Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist who was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Read the passage carefully. Write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Obama makes to convey his message.

Here’s the example thesis statement, taken from the introduction paragraph: “Through the use of diction that portrays Parks as quiet and demure, long lists that emphasize the extent of her impacts, and Biblical references, Obama suggests that all of us are capable of achieving greater good, just as Parks did.” Now read the body paragraph example, below.

“To further illustrate Parks’ impact, Obama incorporates Biblical references that emphasize the importance of “that single moment on the bus” (lines 57-58). In lines 33-35, Obama explains that Parks and the other protestors are “driven by a solemn determination to affirm their God-given dignity” and he also compares their victory to the fall the “ancient walls of Jericho” (line 43). By including these Biblical references, Obama suggests that Parks’ action on the bus did more than correct personal or political wrongs; it also corrected moral and spiritual wrongs. Although Parks had no political power or fortune, she was able to restore a moral balance in our world.”

Body Paragraph Example 2 Dissected

The first sentence in this body paragraph example indicates that the topic is transitioning into biblical references as a means of motivating ordinary citizens. The evidence comes as quotes taken from Obama’s speech. One is a reference to God, and the other an allusion to a story from the bible. The subsequent interpretation and analysis demonstrate that Obama’s biblical references imply a deeper, moral and spiritual significance. The concluding sentence draws together the morality inherent in equal rights with Rosa Parks’ power to spark change. Through the words “no political power or fortune,” and “moral balance,” the writer ties the point proven in this body paragraph back to the thesis statement. Obama promises that “All of us” (no matter how small our influence) “are capable of achieving greater good”—a greater moral good.

What’s Next?

Before you body paragraphs come the start and, after your body paragraphs, the conclusion, of course! If you’ve found this article helpful, be sure to read up on how to start a college essay and how to end a college essay .

You may also find the following blogs to be of interest:

• 6 Best Common App Essay Examples
• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay
• UC Essay Examples 
• How to Write the Community Essay
• How to Write the Why this Major? Essay
• College Essay

Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

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5.4 Body Paragraphs

The term body paragraph refers to any paragraph that appears between the introductory and concluding sections of an essay. A good body paragraph should support the claim made in the thesis statement by developing only one key supporting idea. Your thesis gives the reader a road-map to your essay, and your body paragraphs should closely follow that map. The body paragraphs present the ideas that support your thesis, using the various rhetorical strategies that you find most effectively address your subject, audience, and purpose. This idea is often referred to as a sub-claim.

Some sub-claims will take more time to develop than others, so body paragraph length can and often should vary in order to maintain your reader’s interest. When constructing a body paragraph, the most important objectives are to stay on-topic and to fully develop your sub-claim.

Developing a paragraph can be a difficult task for many students. They usually approach the task with certain ideas firmly in mind, most notably that a paragraph is 5-6 sentences and the paragraph is about what they are talking about, which isn’t necessarily a bad place to start. But when pushed to explain more specifically what constitutes a good paragraph or how to present the information they will discuss, problems begin to emerge. If you are struggling to craft a fully developed paragraph, you might find the following step-by-step approach helpful.

Perhaps the easiest way to think about a “fully developed” paragraph is to think of writing each paragraph in 6 different steps rather than a certain amount of sentences .  These steps can be helpful in not only understanding the criteria needed in a paragraph or how they connect to one another to create a conversation in your paper but also ensuring that your audience understands your purpose in presenting this paragraph.

Focusing on the number of sentences may limit how you express the idea being discussed. However, this doesn’t mean that the information can be presented without a plan in mind; you should begin with understanding what a paragraph needs to “be” and “do.”

Goals of the Paragraph: What it should “be”

While there is no “right way” to develop a paragraph, there are certain criteria that an academic paragraph should work to be:

• Unified: Every sentence presented works to explain the main idea of the paragraph.
• Coherent : You present the information in a logical order that allows the audience to understand your purpose.
• Developed: To achieve this, you must provide enough information so that the audience has a clear understanding of the main idea expressed in the topic sentence.

Developing the Paragraph: Creating what it should “do”

1. Establish a Main Idea (Topic) .

• Too often, students focus on the wrong part of the topic sentence. They believe that the topic or subject (or sub-claim) is the most important part of the sentence since “that is what I am talking about.” This is where the trouble with unity begins. There are many ways to discuss the topic, so conceivably any information related to that topic could end up in the paragraph. Ultimately, the unity breaks down and the reader will not understand the significance of your idea because the information may be having two different conversations, instead of one.
• Use a transitional device to effortlessly segue from the idea discussed in the previous paragraph. When choosing a transitional device, you should consider whether your new paragraph will build onto the topic of your previous paragraph, begin to develop a new key idea or sub-claim, or present a counterargument or concession.
• Identify the key idea or sub-claim that you intend to expand upon in your new paragraph. Even if you are building onto the idea of the previous paragraph, you will still need to identify the sub-claim in your topic sentence. When constructing a topic sentence, you may feel as though you are stating the obvious or being repetitive, but your readers will need this information to guide them to a thorough understanding of your ideas.
• To connect to your thesis, you should consider the function of the body paragraph, which will usually depend upon the type of essay you are writing; for example, your topic sentence should suggest whether your goal is to inform or persuade your readers (your topic sentence should indicate whether or not you have an opinion or perspective on the topic).

2. Provide an Explanation

• This step may be a bit of a trap.  Many students are often tempted to reach for their research and begin providing support for the main idea . However, this isn’t always the best option. Many times when students do this, they are using their research/ support to think of them. Before reaching for the research, students should explain  their topic sentence.
• You can also think of this section as a link between the topic sentence and supporting evidence where you provide any necessary contextual information for the evidence.
• The main focus of any paragraph should be what you have to say. If you are putting forth this idea in support of your thesis, the audience is going to want to know what you think about it–what is significant about this main idea. They may not fully understand the topic sentence the way you intend them to, so explain your reasoning to the reader.

3. Provide Support/ Evidence

• Now that your audience should have a better understanding of the main idea/ topic, you are ready to provide support/ evidence . You want to be very selective when deciding what textual support to include in the paragraph. Not all evidence is the same, and not all evidence achieves the same goals (thinking ethos/ logos/ pathos here). The textual support should help to reinforce or illustrate more about your topic sentence for the reader, helping them understand it more completely.
• Supporting your ideas effectively is essential to establishing your credibility as a writer, so you should choose your supporting evidence wisely and clearly explain it to your audience. Understanding and appealing to your audience can also help determine what your readers will consider good support and what they’ll consider to be weak.
• Statistics and data
• Research studies and scholarship
• Hypothetical and real-life examples
• Historical facts
• Case histories
• Expert testimonies or opinions
• Eye-witness accounts
• Applicable personal experiences or anecdotesTypes of support might include the following:
• Varying your means of support will lend further credibility to your essay and help to maintain your reader’s interest. Keep in mind, though, that some types of support are more appropriate for certain academic disciplines than for others.

4. Interpret the Support/ Evidence

• Remember not to conclude your body paragraph with supporting evidence. Rather than assuming that the evidence you have provided speaks for itself, it is important to explain  why  that evidence proves or supports the key idea you present in your topic sentence and (ultimately) the claim you make in your thesis statement.
• This is often one of the more difficult aspects for students, and a step in the development that they overlook. No matter how clear you think the textual support provided is, it does not speak for itself. The reason is that the audience may not understand how you intend them to interpret the information, and how that relates to supporting the main idea of the paragraph. When you explain how this information is relevant to your topic sentence, and why it is significant, you need to offer insight into that information.
• Don’t simply follow up your support with a single sentence that begins with a phrase like “This proves” or “Meaning” and then restate what the evidence said. Know why you included this information and why it is important to your paragraph.   You need to connect the dots for your reader, so they see exactly how that information is providing support, and helping your main idea.
• The bulk of the information should be coming from you, not your sources.  Your audience wants to what it is that you think, your perspective on the idea, and how you intend to link it back to the thesis.
• Relevance or significance
• Comparison or contrast
• Cause and effect
• Refutation or concession
• Suggested action or conclusion
• Proposal for further study
• Personal reaction
• Try to avoid simply repeating the source material differently or using phrases like “This quote means” to begin your explanation. Keep in mind that your voice should control your essay and guide your audience to a greater understanding of the source material’s relevance to your claim .

5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4, if necessary

• If you have more than one piece of textual support that you want to include, you need to repeat the two previous steps to fully develop your paragraph . You will want to vary your evidence. If you use statistics, then you may want to include expert testimony. If the first piece of evidence focuses on logic, you want to tap into one of the other appeals such as pathos to bring a full view of the issue to your reader. However, you don’t want to keep simply repeating this sequence: evidence should be used to help achieve your purpose, not to fill space.

6. Connect to the thesis statement

• emphasize the importance of understanding the idea,
• make a connection to previous and/or forthcoming ideas
• overall ensure that the information is related directly back to the main purpose of the essay as defined in your thesis statement.

While this is not the only way to write a paragraph, it can be a helpful guide and/or model when you need a structure to begin shaping and organizing your ideas, to help you compose a unified, coherent, well-developed paragraph.

Organizing Body Paragraphs

Even though you might have an overall structure for your essay and all your main ideas planned, the best order for those ideas and their body paragraphs may not be apparent. However the method of organization in an essay can be just as important as its content. Without a clear organizational pattern, your reader could become confused and lose interest. The way you structure your essay helps your readers draw connections between the body and the thesis, and the structure also keeps you focused as you plan and write the essay. Choosing your organizational pattern before you outline ensures that each body paragraph works to support and develop your thesis.

Each paragraph should be an irreplaceable node within a coherent sequence of logic. Thinking of paragraphs as “building blocks” evokes the “five-paragraph theme” structure: if you have identical stone blocks, it hardly matters what order they’re in. In a successful organically structured college paper, the structure and tone of each paragraph reflect its indispensable role within the overall piece. These goals—making every bit count and having each part situated within the whole—also anchor the discussion in the next chapter: how to write introductions and conclusions that frame.

Amy Guptill

When you begin to draft your essay, your ideas may seem to flow from your mind in a seemingly random manner. Your readers, who bring to the table different backgrounds, viewpoints, and ideas, need you to organize these ideas to help process and accept them.

A solid organizational pattern gives your ideas a path that you can follow as you develop your draft. Knowing how you will organize your paragraphs allows you to better express and analyze your thoughts. Planning the structure of your essay before you choose supporting evidence helps you conduct more effective and targeted research.

Chronological Order

Chronological arrangement has the following purposes:

• To explain the history of an event or a topic
• To tell a story or relate an experience
• To explain how to do or make something
• To explain the steps in a process

Chronological order is mostly used in expository writing , which is a form of writing that narrates, describes, informs, or explains a process. When using chronological order, arrange the events in the order that they happened, or will happen if you are giving instructions. This method requires you to use words such as first , second , then , after that , later , and finally . These transition words guide you and your reader through the paper as you expand your thesis.

For example, if you are writing an essay about the history of the airline industry, you would begin with its conception and detail the essential timeline events up until the present day. You would follow the chain of events using words such as first , then , next , and so on.

Keep in mind that chronological order is most appropriate for the following purposes:

• Writing essays containing heavy research
• Writing essays with the aim of listing, explaining, or narrating
• Writing essays that analyze literary works such as poems, plays, or books

Order of Importance

Order of importance is best used for the following purposes:

• Persuading and convincing
• Ranking items by their importance, benefit, or significance
• Illustrating a situation, problem, or solution

Most essays move from the least to the most important point, and the paragraphs are arranged to build the essay’s strength. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to begin with your most important supporting point, such as in an essay that contains a highly debatable thesis. When writing a persuasive essay, it is best to begin with the most important point because it immediately captivates your readers and compels them to continue reading.

For example, if you were supporting your thesis that homework is detrimental to the education of high school students, you would want to present your most convincing argument first, and then move on to the less important points for your case.

Some key transitional words you should use with this method of organization are most importantly , almost as importantly , just as importantly , and finally .

Spatial Order

Spatial order is best used for the following purposes:

• Helping readers visualize something as you want them to see it
• Evoking a scene using the senses (sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound)
• Writing a descriptive essay

Spatial order means that you explain or describe objects as they are arranged around you in your space, for example in a bedroom. As the writer, you create a picture for your readers, and their perspective is the viewpoint from which you describe what is around you.

The view must move in an orderly, logical progression, giving the reader clear directional signals to follow from place to place. The key to using this method is to choose a specific starting point and then guide the reader to follow your eye as it moves in an orderly trajectory from your starting point.

The paragraph incorporates two objectives you have learned in this chapter: using an implied topic sentence and applying spatial order. Often in a descriptive essay, the two work together.

Regardless of the order you chose, your introduction should indicate the information you will cover and in what order, and the introduction should also establish the relevance of the information. This step will make your essay easier to organize and for your readers to follow. Your body paragraphs should then provide clear divisions.

James C Devlin

Back to Paragraph Flow

Like sentence length, paragraph length varies. There is no single ideal length for “the perfect paragraph.”  There are some general guidelines, however. Some writing handbooks or resources suggest that a paragraph should be at least three or four sentences; others suggest that 100 to 200 words is a good target to shoot for. In academic writing, paragraphs tend to be longer, while in less formal or less complex writing, such as in a newspaper, paragraphs tend to be much shorter. Two-thirds to three-fourths of a page is usually a good target length for paragraphs at your current level of college writing. If your readers can’t see a paragraph break on the page, they might wonder if the paragraph is ever going to end or they might lose interest.

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that the amount of space needed to develop one idea will likely be different than the amount of space needed to develop another. So when is a paragraph complete? The answer is when it’s fully developed. The guidelines above for providing good support should help.

Some signals that it’s time to end a paragraph and start a new one include that

• You’re ready to begin developing a new idea
• You want to emphasize a point by setting it apart
• You’re getting ready to continue discussing the same idea but in a different way (e.g. shifting from comparison to contrast)
• You notice that your current paragraph is getting too long (more than three-fourths of a page or so), and you think your writers will need a visual break

Some signals that you may want to combine paragraphs include that

• You notice that some of your paragraphs appear to be short and choppy
• You have multiple paragraphs on the same topic
• You have undeveloped material that needs to be united under a clear topic

Finally, paragraph number is a lot like paragraph length. You may have been asked in the past to write a five-paragraph essay. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a five-paragraph essay, but just like sentence length and paragraph length, the number of paragraphs in an essay depends upon what’s needed to get the job done. There’s no way to know that until you start writing. So try not to worry too much about the proper length and number of things. Just start writing and see where the essay and the paragraphs take you. There will be plenty of time to sort out the organization in the revision process. You’re not trying to fit pegs into holes here. You’re letting your ideas unfold. Give yourself—and them—the space to let that happen.

Additional Readings

• Check out this article on Academic Paragraph Structure  for additional tips on writing body paragraphs.
• The article on Body Paragraphs: How to Write Perfect Ones from Grammarly Blog also covers more of this information.

Attributions

The Writing Textbook  by Josh Woods, editor and contributor, as well as an unnamed author (by request from the original publisher), and other authors named separately is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing  by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

This chapter has additions, edits, and organization by James Charles Devlin.

5.4 Body Paragraphs Copyright © by James Charles Devlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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4c. Body Paragraphs

Body paragraphs present the reasoning and evidence to demonstrate your thesis. In academic essays, body paragraphs are typically a bit more substantial than in news reporting so a writer can share their own ideas, develop their reasoning, cite evidence, and engage in conversation with other writers and scholars. A typical body paragraph in a college essay contains the following elements, which can be remembered through the useful acronym TREAT.

The TREAT Method

• T opic Sentence – an assertion that supports the thesis and presents the main idea of the paragraph
• R easoning – critical thinking and rhetorical appeals: ethos, logos, and pathos
• E vidence – facts, examples, and other evidence integrated into the paragraph using summaries, paraphrases, and quotations
• A nalysis – examination and contextualization of the evidence and reasoning
• T ransition – the flow of ideas from one paragraph to the next

Effective body paragraphs are:

• Specific and narrow .  Topic sentences provide your audience a point of transition and flow from paragraph to paragraph. Topic sentences help you expand and develop your thesis and set up the organization of each paragraph. Developing specific reasoning and specific, concrete examples and evidence in each paragraph will build your credibility with readers. If used properly, well-developed reasoning and evidence are more compelling than general facts and observations.
• Relevant to the thesis.  Primary support is considered strong when it relates directly to the thesis. Body paragraphs should show, explain, and prove your thesis without delving into irrelevant details. With practice and the understanding that there is always another essay, effective writers resist the temptation to lose focus. Keeping your audience and purpose in mind when choosing examples will help you make sure to stay focused on your thesis.
• Detailed . Academic paragraphs are typically longer than newspaper and magazine paragraphs because scholars need space to develop their reasoning and provide sufficiently detailed evidence to support their claims. Using multiple examples and precise details shows readers that you have considered the facts carefully and enhances the impact of your ideas.
• Organized . If your paragraph starts to include information or ideas that stray from your topic sentence, either the paragraph or the topic sentence might need to change.

Reasoning and Evidence

In written and oral communication, we demonstrate our critical thinking skills through the various types of rhetorical appeals we make to our audience.  The purpose and audience for a writing task shape the way writers develop reasoning and select evidence to support their ideas.  Writers develop reasoning in body paragraphs through three primary methods: ethos, logos, and pathos.  Writers can deploy many forms of evidence to support their reasoning, including: facts, examples, judgments, testimony, and personal experience.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle developed a simple method for categorizing forms of reasoning by identifying three primary modes of argumentative reasoning: ethos, logos, and pathos.

• Ethos  is reasoning that establishes a writer’s credibility. By showing yourself to be a critical and sympathetic reader, who considers multiple perspectives and demonstrates ethical thinking, you can establish ethos in your body paragraphs.
• Logos  is reasoning that develops logical arguments and demonstrates a writer’s command of the facts. Demonstrating your knowledge of the facts and showing that you can distinguish between competing claims at truth will ground your writing in common sense and objectivity.
• Pathos  is reasoning that appeals to human emotions and psychological motivations. Humans are subjective animals, and our ability to develop an emotional connection with an audience can have a powerful or subtle impact on whether they will agree with a writer’s reasoning.

A fourth form of reasoning,  kairos , can occasionally be used to make an appeal to an audience that the perfect moment or right opportunity has arisen for action. Arguments for changing policies, ending wars, starting revolutions, or engaging in radical social change typically deploy kairos in addition to ethos, logos, and pathos in order to motivate people to take action a critical times in history.

Evidence includes anything that can help you support your reasoning and develop your thesis. As you develop body paragraphs, you reveal evidence to your readers and then provide analysis to help the reader understand how the evidence supports the reasoning and assertions you are making in each body paragraph.  Be sure to check with each instructor to confirm what types of evidence are appropriate for each writing task you are assigned. The following kinds of evidence are commonly used in academic essays:

• Facts . Facts are the best kind of evidence to use for academic essays because they often cannot be disputed or distorted. Facts can support your stance by providing background information or a solid evidence-based foundation for your point of view. Remember that facts need explanations. Be sure to use signal phrases like “according to” and “as demonstrated by” to introduce facts and use analysis to explain the relevance of facts to your readers.
• Examples  show readers that your ideas are grounded in real situations and contexts. Examples help you highlight general trends and ground your facts in the real world. Be careful not to take examples out of context or overgeneralize based on individual cases.
• Judgments . Judgments are the conclusions of experts drawn from a set of examples or evidence. Judgments are more credible than opinions because they are founded upon careful reasoning and a thorough examination of a topic. Citing a credible expert to support your opinion can be a powerful way to build ethos in your writing.
• Testimony . Testimony consists of direct quotations from eyewitnesses or expert witnesses. An eyewitness is someone who has direct experience with a subject; they add authenticity and credibility to an argument or perspective based on facts. An expert witness is a person who has extensive expertise or experience with a topic. This person provides commentary based on their interpretation of the facts or extensive knowledge on a topic or event.
• Personal Experience . Personal observation is similar to eyewitness or expert testimony but consists of your own experiences and/or expertise. Personal experience can be effective in academic essays if directly relevant to the topic and suited to the purpose of a writing task.

Key Takeaways

• Always be aware of your purpose for writing and the needs of your audience. Cater to those needs in every sensible way.
• Write paragraphs of an appropriate length for your writing assignment. Paragraphs in college-level writing can be up to a page long, as long as they cover the main topics in your outline.
• Use your prewriting and outline to guide the development of your paragraphs and the elaboration of your ideas.

Addressing Counterarguments and Different Perspectives

“Few things are more difficult than to see outside the bounds of your own perspective—to be able to identify assumptions that you take as universal truths but which, instead, have been crafted by your own unique identity and experiences in the world.”

~David Takacs

Why acknowledge and respond to other points of view?

• Address potential weaknesses in your argument before others can point them out to you.
• Acknowledge the complexity of an issue by considering different perspectives and aspects of an issue. No issue has a simple solution or is just Side A versus Side B.
• Establish your writing ethos (can your reader trust you?): your reader is more likely to trust you if you thoughtfully analyze an issue from multiple angles.
• Add to your essay’s word count!

Four steps to acknowledging and responding to other points of view

Step one: know your standpoint, what is my standpoint and why should i know it.

• Standpoint is the unique perspective from which you view the world. It includes: your background and experiences, your political and religious beliefs, your identity (gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and ability), your relationship to others, and your social privilege. These are things that will affect how you view and understand an issue.
• It’s important to acknowledge your standpoint because it affects what and how you argue.

Good writers are good readers! And good readers. . .

• Who are you?
• Make a list of what you’ll bring to a conversation about the issue on which you’re writing. What are your assumptions, your background and experience, your knowledge and expertise? Be honest!

Consider writing your standpoint into your essay

• Writing your standpoint into your essay builds trust with your readers. Even if they have a different standpoint, they will respect your honesty and hopefully listen respectfully to what you have to say.
• Writing from your standpoint can make your writing feel more authentic , to you and your reader. “This is me!”

Even if you don’t explicitly reveal your standpoint to your reader, you’ll want to know your standpoint so that you are aware of your own implicit bias as you write.

How do I write in my standpoint? Can I use “I”?

Try one of these templates:

• “What concerns me as a business major . . .”
• “I write this essay during a time when . . .”
• “I am concerned about. . .”

See how other writers we’ve read have done it:

• “Now, as a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education , I. . .” [From Anthony Abraham Jack, “I Was a Low-Income College Student. Classes Weren’t the Hard Part.” The New York Times Magazine ]
• “From my first day as a sociology professor at a university with a Division I football and men’s basketball team , education and athletics struck me as being inherently at odds. . .” [From Jasmine Harris, “It’s Naive to Think College Athletes Have Time for School,” The Conversation ]
• “In this society, that norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure. It is within this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside. Those of us who stand outside that power , for any reason, often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that quality to be the primary reason for all oppression. . .” [From Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”]
• “I might not carry with me the feeling of my audience in stating my own belief. . .” [From Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”]

Step Two: C onsider potential weaknesses in your argument and different points of view on the issue

What potential weaknesses in your argument might you address.

• Logic : would a reader question any of your assumptions?
• between your reasoning and your claim: your main unstated assumption
• or between your evidence and your reasoning: is there evidence or types of evidence a reader might be skeptical of?
• Does the reader hold false assumptions about the issue?
• Could a reader give a different explanation of the issue ?
• Could a reader draw a different conclusion from the evidence ?
• Is there a specific reader who would disagree?

What alternative points of view on the issue might you consider?

• How might someone think differently about the issue?
• How might someone approach the issue from a different standpoint?
• What might keep someone from trusting or believing a claim or point you make?
• What might make someone tentative about taking action?
• What might keep a person from having an open mind?

Which one should I choose to address?

It depends on the essay’s length. You might consider 1-2 counterarguments that are most important for you to address in a paper (depending on the length).

• this could be a view your audience/community is likely to hold themselves
• or a common-knowledge one you think everyone will think of while reading
• and of course the one that is most specific to your argument
• if you can get one that fits more than one of these criteria, that’s even better!

What NOT to do when considering a counterargument

Build a straw man counterargument

• A straw man argument is a logical fallacy where the writer misrepresents or oversimplifies someone else’s argument in order to make it easier to refute.
• Writers also create straw man arguments when they make up a potential counterargument that is easy to refute, but isn’t something most people would reasonably believe.

Step Three: It’s time to write your counterargument into your essay

An exemplary counterargument:.

• exists as its own paragraph
• you fully acknowledge and respond to it
• Note: You don’t have to refute a counterargument for your argument to work. Our world is big enough to hold multiple points of view. The paragraph should ultimately support your thesis, but you may amend, qualify, complicate, or open up your claim, which is often why, organizationally, discussion of counterarguments or different points of view work best in the introduction of your essay to set up your claim or as the last body paragraph to lead into your conclusion.
• relates to your audience/community’s likely concerns and interests
• seems like a realistic thing someone might think (is not a straw man or caricature)
• ideally, is specific to your argument, not your topic in general
• considers both sides respectfully
• may be more than one counterargument or different perspective, but you’d need a separate paragraph for each in order to give them full consideration

Addressing a counterargument versus a different perspective

A true counterargument is the opposing claim on an issue:

• Claim: Academic probation does not help students progress.
• Counterargument: Academic probation does help students progress.

Different perspectives might offer different reasoning, consider different factors or conditions, or ask about different groups of people or situations.

A counterargument needs to be rebutted. Different perspectives can help you amend, qualify, complicate, or open up your claim.

You might use a counterargument to qualify your thesis

An example:

Reasoned thesis : Hook-up culture is now at the center of the institution of higher education because it is thick, palpable, the air students breathe, and we find it on almost every residential campus in America. [From Lisa Wade, “Sociology and the New Culture of Hooking Up on College Campuses“]

A counterargument : Research findings suggest that the sexual practices of college students haven’t changed much since the 1980s. [From David Ludden, “Is Hook-Up Culture Dominating College Campuses?”]

Qualified claim : Although sexual practices of college students haven’t changed much in the last few decades , hook-up culture is now at the center of the institution of higher education because it is thick, palpable. . .

Counterargument paragraph : “The topic of my book, then, isn’t just hooking up; it’s hook-up  culture . . .” (Wade).

A template for a counterargument paragraph

I recognize that others may have a different perspective than [state your claim*]. They might believe that [state their claim]. They believe this because [provide several sentences of support]. However, [restate your claim and explain in several sentences why you believe the way you do].

*You can also consider counterpoints to your reasoning, evidence, or standpoint.

Step Four: Decide where to organize your counterargument paragraph

Being aware of different perspectives can also help you develop your conclusion paragraph. In your conclusion, you can reaffirm your claim and then:

• amend part of your claim
• qualify your claim
• complicate your claim
• open up your claim

Writing as collaboration

Think of adding in counterarguments or different perspectives as collaborating with others on addressing an issue. . .

Brazuca illustrations by Cezar Berje, CC0

Opening up our minds and our hearts to different perspectives makes us stronger.

Writing as Inquiry Copyright © 2021 by Kara Clevinger and Stephen Rust is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Body Paragraphs

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Body paragraphs: Moving from general to specific information

Your paper should be organized in a manner that moves from general to specific information. Every time you begin a new subject, think of an inverted pyramid - The broadest range of information sits at the top, and as the paragraph or paper progresses, the author becomes more and more focused on the argument ending with specific, detailed evidence supporting a claim. Lastly, the author explains how and why the information she has just provided connects to and supports her thesis (a brief wrap-up or warrant).

Moving from General to Specific Information

The four elements of a good paragraph (TTEB)

A good paragraph should contain at least the following four elements: T ransition, T opic sentence, specific E vidence and analysis, and a B rief wrap-up sentence (also known as a warrant ) –TTEB!

• A T ransition sentence leading in from a previous paragraph to assure smooth reading. This acts as a hand-off from one idea to the next.
• A T opic sentence that tells the reader what you will be discussing in the paragraph.
• Specific E vidence and analysis that supports one of your claims and that provides a deeper level of detail than your topic sentence.
• A B rief wrap-up sentence that tells the reader how and why this information supports the paper’s thesis. The brief wrap-up is also known as the warrant. The warrant is important to your argument because it connects your reasoning and support to your thesis, and it shows that the information in the paragraph is related to your thesis and helps defend it.

Supporting evidence (induction and deduction)

Induction is the type of reasoning that moves from specific facts to a general conclusion. When you use induction in your paper, you will state your thesis (which is actually the conclusion you have come to after looking at all the facts) and then support your thesis with the facts. The following is an example of induction taken from Dorothy U. Seyler’s Understanding Argument :

There is the dead body of Smith. Smith was shot in his bedroom between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., according to the coroner. Smith was shot with a .32 caliber pistol. The pistol left in the bedroom contains Jones’s fingerprints. Jones was seen, by a neighbor, entering the Smith home at around 11:00 p.m. the night of Smith’s death. A coworker heard Smith and Jones arguing in Smith’s office the morning of the day Smith died.

Conclusion: Jones killed Smith.

Here, then, is the example in bullet form:

• Conclusion: Jones killed Smith
• Support: Smith was shot by Jones’ gun, Jones was seen entering the scene of the crime, Jones and Smith argued earlier in the day Smith died.
• Assumption: The facts are representative, not isolated incidents, and thus reveal a trend, justifying the conclusion drawn.

When you use deduction in an argument, you begin with general premises and move to a specific conclusion. There is a precise pattern you must use when you reason deductively. This pattern is called syllogistic reasoning (the syllogism). Syllogistic reasoning (deduction) is organized in three steps:

• Major premise
• Minor premise

In order for the syllogism (deduction) to work, you must accept that the relationship of the two premises lead, logically, to the conclusion. Here are two examples of deduction or syllogistic reasoning:

• Major premise: All men are mortal.
• Minor premise: Socrates is a man.
• Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.
• Major premise: People who perform with courage and clear purpose in a crisis are great leaders.
• Minor premise: Lincoln was a person who performed with courage and a clear purpose in a crisis.
• Conclusion: Lincoln was a great leader.

So in order for deduction to work in the example involving Socrates, you must agree that (1) all men are mortal (they all die); and (2) Socrates is a man. If you disagree with either of these premises, the conclusion is invalid. The example using Socrates isn’t so difficult to validate. But when you move into more murky water (when you use terms such as courage , clear purpose , and great ), the connections get tenuous.

For example, some historians might argue that Lincoln didn’t really shine until a few years into the Civil War, after many Union losses to Southern leaders such as Robert E. Lee.

The following is a clear example of deduction gone awry:

• Major premise: All dogs make good pets.
• Minor premise: Doogle is a dog.
• Conclusion: Doogle will make a good pet.

If you don’t agree that all dogs make good pets, then the conclusion that Doogle will make a good pet is invalid.

When a premise in a syllogism is missing, the syllogism becomes an enthymeme. Enthymemes can be very effective in argument, but they can also be unethical and lead to invalid conclusions. Authors often use enthymemes to persuade audiences. The following is an example of an enthymeme:

If you have a plasma TV, you are not poor.

The first part of the enthymeme (If you have a plasma TV) is the stated premise. The second part of the statement (you are not poor) is the conclusion. Therefore, the unstated premise is “Only rich people have plasma TVs.” The enthymeme above leads us to an invalid conclusion (people who own plasma TVs are not poor) because there are plenty of people who own plasma TVs who are poor. Let’s look at this enthymeme in a syllogistic structure:

• Major premise: People who own plasma TVs are rich (unstated above).
• Minor premise: You own a plasma TV.
• Conclusion: You are not poor.

To help you understand how induction and deduction can work together to form a solid argument, you may want to look at the United States Declaration of Independence. The first section of the Declaration contains a series of syllogisms, while the middle section is an inductive list of examples. The final section brings the first and second sections together in a compelling conclusion.

• The Writing Process
• Addressing the Prompt
• Writing Skill: Development
• Originality
• Timed Writing (Expectations)
• Integrated Writing (Writing Process)
• Introduction to Academic Essays
• Organization
• Introduction Paragraphs

Body Paragraphs

• Conclusion Paragraphs
• Example Essay 1
• Example Essay 2
• Timed Writing (The Prompt)
• Integrated Writing (TOEFL Task 1)
• Process Essays
• Process Essay Example 1
• Process Essay Example 2
• Writing Skill: Unity
• Revise A Process Essay
• Timed Writing (Choose a Position)
• Integrated Writing (TOEFL Task 2)
• Comparison Essays
• Comparison Essay Example 1
• Comparison Essay Example 2
• Writing Skill: Cohesion
• Revise A Comparison Essay
• Timed Writing (Plans & Problems)
• Integrated Writing (Word Choice)
• Problem/Solution Essays
• Problem/Solution Essay Example 1
• Problem/Solution Example Essay 2
• Writing Skill: Summary
• Revise A Problem/Solution Essay
• Timed Writing (Revising)
• Integrated Writing (Summary)
• More Writing Skills
• Punctuation
• Simple Sentences
• Compound Sentences
• Complex Sentences Part 1
• Complex Sentences Part 2
• Using Academic Vocabulary
• Translations

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Body paragraphs should all work to support your thesis by explaining why or how your thesis is true. There are three types of sentences in each body paragraph: topic sentences, supporting sentences, and concluding sentences.

Topic sentences

A topic sentence states the focus of the paragraph. The rest of the body paragraph will give evidence and explanations that show why or how your topic sentence is true. A topic sentence is very similar to a thesis. The thesis is the main idea of the essay; a topic sentence is the main idea of a body paragraph. Many of the same characteristics apply to topic sentences that apply to theses. The biggest differences will be the location of the sentence and the scope of the ideas.

An effective topic sentence—

• clearly supports the thesis statement.
• is usually at the beginning of a body paragraph.
• controls the content of all of the supporting sentences in its paragraph.
• is a complete sentence.
• does not announce the topic (e.g., “I’m going to talk about exercise.”).
• should not be t oo general (e.g., “Exercise is good.”).
• should not be too specific (e.g., “Exercise decreases the chance of developing diabetes, heart disease, asthma, osteoporosis, depression, and anxiety.”).

Supporting sentences

Your body paragraph needs to explain why or how your topic sentence is true. The sentences that support your topic sentence are called supporting sentences. You can have many types of supporting sentences. Supporting sentences can give examples, explanations, details, descriptions, facts, reasons, etc.

Concluding sentences

Your final statement should conclude your paragraph logically. Concluding sentences can restate the main idea of your paragraph, state an opinion, make a prediction, give advice, etc. New ideas should not be presented in your concluding sentence.

 Exercise 1: Analyze a topic sentence.

Read the example body paragraph below to complete this exercise on a piece of paper.

Prompt: Why is exercise important?

Thesis: Exercise is essential because it improves overall physical and mental health.

            Because it makes your body healthier, exercise is extremely important. One of the physical benefits of exercise is having stronger muscles. The only way to make your muscles stronger is to use them, and exercises like crunches, squats, lunges, push-ups, and weight-lifting are good examples of exercises that strengthen your muscles. Another benefit of exercise is that it lowers your heart rate. A slow heart rate can show that our hearts are working more efficiently and they don’t have to pump as many times in a minute to get blood to our organs. Related to our heart beating more efficiently, our blood pressure decreases. These are just some of the incredible health benefits of exercise.

Find the topic sentence. Use the following criteria to evaluate the topic sentence.

• Does the topic sentence clearly support the thesis statement?
• Is the topic sentence at the beginning of the body paragraph?
• Does the topic sentence control the content of all the supporting sentences?
• Is the topic sentence a complete sentence?
• Does the topic sentence announce the topic?
• Is the topic sentence too general? Is it too specific?

Exercise 2: Identify topic sentences.

Each group of sentences has three supporting sentences and one topic sentence. The topic sentence must be broad enough to include all of the supporting sentences. In each group of sentences, choose which sentence is the topic sentence. Write the letter of the topic sentence on the line given.  

Group 1: Topic sentence: _________ 

• In southern Utah, hikers enjoy the scenic trails in Zion National Park.  
• Many cities in Utah have created hiking trails in city parks for people to use.  
• There are hiking paths in Utah’s Rocky Mountains that provide beautiful views.  
• Hikers all over Utah can access hiking trails and enjoy nature.  

Group 2: Topic sentence: _________ 

• People in New York speak many different languages.  
• New York is a culturally diverse city.  
• People in New York belong to many different religions.  
• Restaurants in New York have food from all over the world.  

Group 3: Topic sentence: _________ 

• Websites like YouTube have video tutorials that teach many different skills.  
• Computer programs like PowerPoint are used in classrooms to teach new concepts.  
• Technology helps people learn things in today’s world.  
• Many educational apps have been created to help children in school.  

Group 4: Topic sentence: _________ 

• Museums at BYU host events on the weekends for students.  
• There are many fun activities for students at BYU on the weekends.  
• There are incredible student concerts at BYU on Friday and Saturday nights.  
• BYU clubs plan exciting activities for students to do on the weekends.  

Group 5: Topic sentence: _________

• Some places have a scent that people remember when they think of that place.  
• The smell of someone’s cologne can trigger a memory of that person.  
• Smelling certain foods can bring back memories of eating that food.  
• Many different memories can be connected to specific smells.  

Exercise 3: Write topic sentences

Read each paragraph. On a piece of paper, write a topic sentence on the line at the beginning of the paragraph.

1._______ The first difference is that you have more privacy in a private room than in a shared room. You can go to your room to have a private phone call or Skype with your family and you are not bothered by other people. When you share your room, it can be hard to find private time when you can do things alone. Another difference is that it is lonelier in a private room than in a shared room. When you share your room with a roommate, you have someone that you can talk to. Frequently when you have a private room, you are alone more often. These two housing options are very different.

2. _______ People like to eat chocolate because it has many delicious flavors. For example, there are mint chocolates, milk chocolates, dark chocolates, white chocolates, chocolates with honey, and chocolates with nuts. Another reason people like to eat chocolate is because it reduces stress, which can help people to relax and feel better. The last reason people like to eat chocolate is because it can be cooked in many different ways. You can eat chocolate candies, mix chocolate with warm milk to drink, or prepare a chocolate dessert. These reasons are some of the reasons that people like to eat chocolate.

3. _______ A respectful roommate does not leave the main areas of the apartment messy after they use them. For example, they wash their dishes instead of leaving dirty pots and pans on the stove. They also don’t borrow things from other roommates without asking to use them first. In addition to respecting everyone’s need for space and their possessions, the ideal roommate is respectful of his or her roommate’s schedule. For example, if one roommate is asleep and the other roommates needs to study, the ideal roommate goes to the kitchen or living room instead of waking up the sleeping roommate. These simple gestures of respect make a roommate an excellent person to share an apartment with.

Exercise 4: Identify good supporting sentences.

Read the topic sentence. Then circle which sentences would be good supporting sentences.  

Topic Sentence: Eating pancakes for breakfast saves time and money.  

• Pancakes can be prepared in large quantities and then frozen, so the time it takes to   cook breakfast is only a few minutes.  
• Pancakes are very inexpensive to make because you only need a few ingredients.  
• Pancakes are delicious and can be prepared in a variety of flavors.  
• Pancakes save money because you can buy a big box of mix and only make what you   need; you don’t waste money because you can save the extra mix for another time.  
• Fresh fruit is a really quick breakfast because you only need to wash it and eat it.

Exercise 5: Identify good concluding sentences.

Read the topic sentence. Then circle which sentences would be good concluding sentences.  

Topic Sentence: A shared room offers students a more social experience.  

• Students who want more social interaction should have a shared room.  
• A shared room is not good for students who work late.  
• Everyone loves having a shared room.  
• These examples illustrate how much more social a shared room can be.  
• Really social students will enjoy having a shared room.

Exercise 6: Write concluding sentences.

On a piece of paper, write a concluding sentence at the end of each paragraph.

1. New York is a culturally diverse city. This culture is continually broadened because people immigrate from all over the world bringing different religions, food, and languages with them. This city has people that speak over 30 languages, including Arabic, Mandarin, Untu, Russian, and Polish. There are also more than 20 major religions represented by citizens of New York. These citizens brought more than their language and religion with them, however. They also brought traditional foods from their countries. _______

2. Technology helps people learn things in today’s world. This educational technology includes various websites, apps, programs, and many more things. Popular websites that are used for education include YouTube, TED, Canvas, and CrashCourse. Similarly, there are a variety of educational apps. These apps help users learn languages, history, math, and other practical skills. Computer programs are yet another way to use technology as a way to help people learn. Programs like PowerPoint are frequently used in classrooms as a means to deliver visual support to a lecture or presentation. This visual support aids learning and retention. _______

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Access it online or download it at https://open.byu.edu/academic_a_writing/body_paragraphs .

When You Write

Breaking Down Essays: How Many Paragraphs Should You Have?

Writing an essay and figuring out the basic structure of an essay is one of the biggest challenges faced by students. But have no fear! Today we’re here to tackle one particularly tricky aspect of writing essays: how many paragraphs should be included?

We’ll look at some rules and guidelines for determining when it’s time to move on to a new paragraph – so you can easily craft your next great essay with confidence.

In this article, I’ll take you through the process step-by-step, offering up examples and strategies that will help readers understand what they need to know in order to write dynamic, engaging essays.

Perfect for anyone looking for ways to break free from tired formulae and express their story ideas in innovative ways.

What Is An Essay?

Essays are a common form of writing used in education and work. They can range from persuasive to argumentative, but all require an organized structure with clear thesis statement , topic sentences and supporting evidence. Writing an essay is like creating a piece of art: you have to know the rules before you break them.

When it comes to understanding the basic structure of an essay, there are typically three primary elements: introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion.

The introduction should provide readers with background information about the subject matter or arguments that will be discussed throughout the essay. It also lays out your main point (thesis statement) for readers so they have an understanding of what is coming next.

Body paragraphs usually follow the introduction, as this is where writers present their arguments and support their points with evidence. Each paragraph serves its own purpose; each one introducing one idea at a time until the writer has made his/her case through multiple topics. To make sure this happens effectively, each paragraph must start with a strong focus sentence (topic sentence) which introduces what that particular section will discuss further on.

From here, we move on to crafting our conclusion – wrapping up all ideas presented within our body paragraphs while reiterating our initial thesis statement and providing some final thoughts on the overall subject matter at hand.

This part should not simply repeat what was previously said but rather tie everything together into something meaningful for readers to take away from our essay’s message.

Understanding The Basic Structure Of An Essay

Ah, the art of essay writing. It’s a crafty exercise that can induce feelings of dread and extreme boredom in many high schoolers—not to mention college students. But, like all arts, it has its place in education and there are various ways to create an effective piece of work.

To understand how to write an essay effectively, you must first learn about its basic structure: paragraphs. Paragraphs are essential components of essays; they provide organization for your thoughts and ideas and should be used throughout the entire paper. Generally speaking, each paragraph should contain one main idea which is then supplemented by evidence from outside sources or personal examples. The length of these paragraphs will vary depending on whether you’re writing a short article or longer research paper, but typically five to six sentences work best for most formats.

To get started on drafting your masterpiece, decide what type of essay you’re going to write (persuasive argumentative etc.) and determine the recommended number of paragraphs per format.

After this step is complete, start brainstorming topics related to the essay prompt and begin jotting down notes as well as any relevant quotes or data points that could support your arguments further down the line.

Once these tasks are accomplished, it’s time to dive into actually constructing those individual paragraphs!

Types Of Essays And Recommended Paragraph Structure

When it comes to essays, there are a variety of types and structures. The number of paragraphs can vary depending on the type of essay being written.

The most common format is the five-paragraph essay:

• an introduction,
• three body paragraphs, and
• a conclusion.

Each paragraph should have around six sentences that are focused on one main idea or point. An argumentative or persuasive essay usually follows this structure as well, but may contain more than five paragraphs if necessary for evidence support.

A cause-and-effect essay typically has two parts;

• an introduction followed by
• either two or four body paragraphs

in which causes and effects are discussed respectively. A research paper contains the same elements as other essays but also includes citations from sources used to back up claims made throughout the document. Personal essays often don’t conform to any specific structure because they focus on feelings rather than facts; however, some writers prefer organizing them into three sections with three separate points per section.

No matter what type of essay you’re writing, it’s important to recognize how many paragraphs each requires so your work meets expectations and flows properly between ideas!

Factors Influencing The Number Of Paragraphs In An Essay

As the old adage goes, “form follows function.”

The same is true for essays: how many paragraphs an essay contains depends on its purpose and complexity of the topic.

When writing an essay, it’s important to consider the length of the assignment, time available to complete the task, and resources at hand.

An essay typically consists of three parts: introduction, body containing three body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Depending on the length of the essay and other factors such as difficulty level or argumentative depth, one may need more than three body paragraphs to fully explain their stance on a given subject matter.

The introduction should include information that draws readers in while also setting up what will be discussed in main points throughout your essay.

After this comes your three body paragraphs where you can expand upon each point made by providing evidence or examples from reliable sources.

Finally, conclude with a clear summary of all key topics that have been addressed in your paper without introducing any new ideas not previously mentioned.

When editing and proofreading your work after completion, look out for ways to improve paragraphing based on readability considerations; ensure your paragraph transitions are logical so readers can follow along easily; check if there is enough text within each body paragraph relative to other sections; identify redundancies or irrelevant information that could be eliminated; and finally re-read sentences to make sure they align with the thesis statement set forth in the introduction section.

With these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way towards crafting impressive essays!

Paragraphing Tips For Editing And Proofreading

When editing and proofreading an essay, it’s important to make sure the paragraphs are properly structured. Many people don’t realize that the number of paragraphs included in an essay can make a huge difference. 

Generally, essays should have between three and seven paragraphs, depending on the length of the essay. For shorter essays, three paragraphs is usually enough, while for longer ones, seven is the maximum.

In addition, each paragraph should be focused on a particular idea or topic and should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Proofreading

When proofreading, it’s also important to pay attention to the length of each paragraph. Paragraphs should be long enough to contain a full thought or idea, but not so long that they become hard to follow.

As a rule of thumb, each paragraph should be around five sentences. If a paragraph is too short, it might not contain enough information. If it’s too long, the point of the paragraph might get lost. It’s also important to make sure that each paragraph logically flows into the next, so the reader can understand the essay’s overall argument. 

Having someone else read over your work can be useful because they might spot something you didn’t notice before-but remember to take their advice on board if it’s valid!

In conclusion, the number of paragraphs in an essay can vary depending on its purpose and type.

However, it’s important to ensure that each paragraph is cohesive and serves a clear purpose within your overall argument.

To make sure each paragraph flows naturally into the next, I recommend editing and proofreading for any errors or awkward phrasing.

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Calculate for all schools

Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how many paragraphs should a college essay typically have.

I've been working on my college essay and I'm not sure how many paragraphs it should have. Is there a recommended number of paragraphs or does it vary depending on the essay?

Hey there! The number of paragraphs in a college essay can indeed vary depending on the specific essay. However, it's important to focus on clearly communicating your thoughts and experiences in a well-organized manner rather than stressing over the exact number of paragraphs.

A common format for a college essay is a 5-paragraph structure: an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. This format is just a guideline, though, and you can definitely have more or fewer paragraphs depending on your content and the flow of your essay. My own child used a 7-paragraph structure for their essay, and it worked well for them.

The key is to ensure that your ideas are presented in a logical order and that each paragraph has a specific purpose. If you feel that your essay flows well with, say, 4 or 6 paragraphs, then that's perfectly fine! Sometimes the most successfully essays will abandon a typical essay structure and have many short paragraphs or the essay might be written in the style of a letter, poem, or editorial article. Just try to avoid one big paragraph.

Ultimately, the quality of your writing and the ability to engage the reader are more important than the number of paragraphs. Just make sure you stay within the word limit set by the college! Good luck with your essay!

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Personal Essay Body Paragraphs

Last week I shared I had begun personal essays with my students. This was the first attempt for both my students and myself tackling this genre. I focused solely on the structure for several days and we drafted many flash drafts. I made mini-charts detailing the structure for students to have close at hand. You can see the chart here .

Once students had become more comfortable with the structure I decided to do an on-demand style assessment to see what they could do with less hand holding. It was eye opening. I noticed that many students were following the structure, but as structures do, it was limiting their ability to elaborate and generate details that would add interest. I also noticed that all the work we did on paragraphing during our personal narrative unit was absent. I decided I needed to break this portion of the essay down a bit deeper for students.

We worked together to make a chart showing the breakdown of what our body paragraphs would look like. Students definitely need more time to digest this new genre. I am learning a lot about what pieces I can use from our narrative unit to support this new unit. I think my next step is to work on the elaboration of their supporting evidence. I’m a little worried it could turn into an “and then, and then” situation! We will be talking about how to say a lot in a few sentences to support their statement. We also need to discuss ideas for paragraph transitions.  A T-chart may also make an appearance showing our common problems (confusion and common problems with solutions on the other side to help those still struggling).

I have one more week to cram in as much as I can before the holiday break and then I will only have a few weeks to review and cross my fingers. Hope to revisit this topic with good news in January!

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Published by Betsy Hubbard

Daughter, sister, wife, mother, teacher, and writer. View all posts by Betsy Hubbard

2 thoughts on “ Personal Essay Body Paragraphs ”

During boot camp, I have found that analyzing a student mentor text, and then breaking that mentor text into a T-chart helps with understanding the structure of an expository essay. I love your assessment piece. It is so important for us to look at what our writers are writing every day. After I read what my writers have written for the day, I leave an artifact with a compliment and the TP we need to work on for the next day. It’s so important for our writers to celebrate what work has been accomplished for the day, and what we need to work on during our next conferring session. As we draft together, I color code my introduction, my thesis and the reasons. The reasons are then color coded within the different paragraphs. I follow the same procedure within my conclusion too. It’s a grand time for me when my writers say to me, “Mrs. D. you could have made that sentence stronger by…… Mrs. D. could you use a stronger word?” Our writers have so much wisdom to share with us.

I love this entry, Betsy. I’ve been working with the 4th grade boxes and bullets unit, and did the essay boot camp lesson in the first bend. The teachers followed with the lessons in the first bend. As you know, the second bend is all about elaboration of ideas, and how to stream one thought together with the next, the real writing of any writer in any genre. At that point, someone slipped in a graphic organizer! It immediately poisoned the well. I love the work you’re doing here and the fact that you did that quick assessment, and are now moving into elaboration. Because without that piece, our kids write dull and skinny essays. They never learn how to stretch their pieces and add their own person–ality to their writing! It’s the part that cracks the essay wide open and gives voice and distinction to each students’ work!

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How to Write an Explanatory Essay

• Smodin Editorial Team
• Published: May 24, 2024

A study from the English Language Teaching Educational Journal found that students encounter difficulty in organizing thoughts, generating ideas, and understanding writing processes when writing essays [1]. These are all key components of putting together a good explanatory essay. If this sounds like you, then don’t worry.

With the right approach, you can seamlessly combine all these components. This guide will give you a simple step-by-step strategy for writing an explanatory essay. It’ll also give you handy writing tips and tool suggestions, like utilizing artificial intelligence.

With this guide, you’ll be able to write an explanatory essay with confidence.

1. Develop a strong thesis statement

Crafting a strong thesis statement is the cornerstone of any well-written explanatory essay. It sets the stage for what your essay will cover and clarifies the main point you’re going to explain. Here’s how to create a thesis:

• Find the main idea : Start by pinpointing the key concept or question you want to explain. Develop a clear purpose for the essay. This will guide your research and writing process for your explanatory paper. Use other reputable explanatory essay examples to guide your ideas. This may involve exploring other explanatory essay topics within the same field.
• Be specific : A vague thesis can confuse readers. So, make sure your statement is clear. If you’re explaining a complex process, break it down to its key points. After that, break it into a clear, concise statement that’s easy to understand.
• Reflect objectivity : Explanatory essays educate and inform. They do not argue a point. So, your thesis should take an unbiased stance on the topic. It should present the facts as they are, not as you interpret them.
• Use tools like the Smodin Writer : Smodin Writer does all the heavy lifting by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence. With it, you can generate an essay with a thesis statement. How, you ask? Through its dedicated thesis generator . It can create a statement that’s both strong and relevant. Plus, it can pull in all the most interesting information based on your topic to further enrich your thesis statement.

Make your thesis clear, informative, and neutral. This sets a strong foundation for an effective explanatory essay. Next, let’s look at how to gather the information you’ll need to support this thesis effectively.

2. Research and gather information

You need to conduct thorough research that will back your thesis with credible sources and relevant evidence. This will make your explanatory essay both informative and persuasive. Here’s a step-by-step guide to conducting effective research:

• Start with a plan: Put together an explanatory essay outline that includes the information you need to support your thesis. The plan should list the best sources, like academic journals, books, reputable websites, or scholarly articles.
• Use credible sources: They ensure the accuracy of your essay. Libraries, academic databases, and certified websites are excellent places to find trustworthy information.
• Seek detailed information: Look for the most current sources that explain your topic well and provide unique insights related to or opposing your thesis statement. This depth is crucial for explaining complex ideas clearly and thoroughly in your explanatory papers. Pay attention to the explanatory essay structure to guide your topic of choice (more on this later).
• Gather relevant evidence: Collect data, stats, and examples. They should directly support your main points. Make sure this evidence is directly related to your topic and enhances your narrative.
• Employ digital tools: Tools like Smodin’s Research Assistant can accelerate your research process. Smodin’s tools can help you find detailed information quickly, ensuring that the data you use is up-to-date and relevant.
• Document your sources: As you conduct research, keep a meticulous record of where your information comes from. This practice will help you make an accurate bibliography. It can save you time when you need to refer back to details or verify facts. Again, this is something that’s covered thanks to Smodin’s Citation Machine.
• Evaluate your findings: Critically assess the information you collect. Ensure it provides a balanced view and covers the necessary aspects of your topic to give a comprehensive overview of your essay.

By following these steps, you can gather a rich pool of information that provides a strong backbone for your explanatory essay. Now, you can start structuring your findings into well-organized body paragraphs.

3. Structure body paragraphs

Once you’ve gathered relevant evidence through thorough research, it’s time to organize it. You should put it into well-structured body paragraphs that follow a logical flow. Here’s how to structure each body paragraph for a strong explanatory essay:

• Decide how many paragraphs to use : It will depend on your topic’s complexity and the needed detail. Typically, three to five paragraphs are suitable, but longer essays may require more. An explanatory essay example on your topic of choice will be helpful.
• Start with a topic sentence : Each body paragraph should begin with a clear topic sentence that introduces the main idea of the paragraph. This sentence will act as a roadmap for the paragraph, giving the reader a sense of what to expect.
• Provide supporting evidence : After the topic sentence, share the evidence from your research. Ensure the evidence is relevant and directly supports the paragraph’s topic sentence.
• Give a detailed explanation : Follow the evidence with an analysis or explanation that ties it back to the thesis statement. This step is crucial for maintaining logical flow throughout your body paragraphs.
• Use linking words : They connect body paragraphs smoothly, ensuring the reader can follow your argument.
• End each body paragraph with a closing sentence : It should sum up the point and move to the next idea.

Following this structure will help your body paragraphs support your thesis. These paragraphs will also offer a clear, detailed explanation of your essay topic. Strong body paragraphs are essential to maintain objectivity in your writing.

4. Maintain objectivity

An explanatory essay aims to inform and educate, which makes maintaining objectivity crucial. Staying neutral lets readers form their own opinions based on facts. This ensures the writing is both reliable and informative. Here’s how to maintain objectivity:

• Avoid personal opinions: Your goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Refrain from injecting your personal opinion or biases. Instead, stick to presenting factual information that supports the thesis.
• Use relevant evidence: As mentioned, ground your arguments with relevant evidence from credible sources. Back up your main points with data and use research findings and verified details. This will make the explanatory article trustworthy.
• Provide a balanced view: In cases with multiple perspectives, offer a balanced view. Cover each side fairly. Even if one view prevails in consensus, acknowledging others gives readers a broader understanding.
• Adopt neutral language: Be careful with word choice and tone. Neutral language implies words that don’t encourage or illustrate bias. This helps avoid emotionally charged phrases and keeps the writing objective.
• Cite sources accurately: Proper citation of sources provides accountability for the evidence presented. This transparency builds credibility and shows you’ve conducted research thoroughly. It’s also worth noting that different intuitions have different citation styles like APA and Chicago, which is important to note before starting your essay.
• Review for biases: After drafting your essay, review it with an eye for biases. Ensure no part leans too much on one viewpoint. And, don’t dismiss an opposing perspective without cause.

Maintaining objectivity enhances the clarity and reliability of explanatory writing. Let’s now focus on crafting an introduction and conclusion that bookend your work effectively.

5. Craft an effective introduction and conclusion

A good introduction and a strong conclusion frame your explanatory essay. They give context at the start and reinforce the main points at the end. Here’s how to craft an effective introduction and conclusion.

In the introduction:

• Hook your reader in the introduction : Use an interesting fact, a compelling quote, or a surprising statistic.
• Provide background information : Be brief and offer only the essential context the reader needs to fully understand the topic. This should give the audience a foundational understanding before diving deeper into your main points.
• Include the thesis statement : Clearly state your thesis near the end of the introduction. This statement will outline the essay’s direction and give readers a preview of the body paragraphs.

In the conclusion:

• Summarize the key points : Start your explanatory essay conclusion with a summary. It should cover the main points from the body paragraphs. This summary should help readers recall and reinforce the information they’ve just read.
• Restate the thesis : Repeat your thesis again but in a new way. Explain how the evidence from the body paragraphs supported or clarified it.
• Provide a conclusion : End the essay with a statement that wraps up the argument. This statement should resonate with the reader. It should leave them with an impression that stresses the topic’s importance.

An effective introduction and conclusion give the essay structure and coherence. They guide readers from start to finish. The next step is revising and editing your entire essay for clarity and precision.

6. Revise and check clarity

Revising and editing are key in writing. They make sure your essay is clear, joined, and polished. Here’s how to refine your writing using an explanatory essay checklist and proven academic writing techniques:

• Take a break: Before diving into revisions, step away from your essay for a few hours or even a day. This break will help you return with fresh eyes, making it easier to spot errors or inconsistencies.
• Follow an essay checklist: Create or use a checklist to ensure your essay has all the needed parts. It needs a strong intro with a clear thesis, well-structured body paragraphs, good sources, and a short conclusion. Check that your arguments follow a logical flow and that all relevant evidence is directly linked to your thesis statement.
• Check for clarity and conciseness: Academic writing needs clarity. So, make sure each paragraph and sentence conveys your point. Don’t use unnecessary jargon or overly complex language. Keep sentences concise while maintaining detailed explanations of your main points.
• Verify facts and citations: Make sure all facts, data, and quotes in the essay are accurate. Also, check that they are cited in the required academic style (e.g. MLA, APA). Improper citations can undermine the credibility of your writing.
• Review the grammar and style: Look for common grammar mistakes, punctuation errors, and awkward phrasing. Reading the essay aloud can help catch odd sentence structures or confusing wording.
• Seek feedback: Share your essay with a peer or use online tools to get constructive criticism. A second perspective can highlight issues you might have missed.

These editing steps will help you produce a polished essay that clearly explains your main points and holds up to academic scrutiny.

Explanatory Essay Format

Understanding the explanatory essay format is key to a well-structured and logical paper. Here’s a basic breakdown of the format for an explanatory essay:

Introduction paragraph

• Begin with an interesting sentence to capture the reader’s attention.
• Give a short intro. It should set the topic and outline the essay’s purpose.
• Present a clear thesis statement summarizing the main idea of the entire essay.

Body paragraphs

• Organize the body paragraphs around logical subtopics related to the essay topic.
• Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence that aligns with the thesis.
• Show evidence from good sources. Also, give key details for each main point.
• Incorporate a robust concluding statement per paragraph that drives home your point and links to the ideas in the next paragraph/section.
• Summarize the key points.
• Provide a final statement that reinforces the main idea without introducing new information.
• Craft a concluding statement that leaves your teacher or professor with a lasting impression.

Following this essay outline ensures that your paper has a clear flow. This makes it easy for readers to understand and follow your argument.

Write Better Explanatory Essays With Smodin

Explanatory essays can be overwhelming. Presenting a solid argument, keeping your professor or teacher interested, and remembering conventions like citations can be a real headache.

But, a strong thesis and thorough research make them easier. Well-structured body paragraphs also help deliver a clear, insightful essay that maintains objectivity. Just remember to revise and check for accuracy!

AI-powered platforms like Smodin simplify and enhance the process of writing explanatory essays.

Smodin’s tools help craft clear and well-structured essays that meet any of your academic standards. With Smodin’s advanced research capabilities, you can gather detailed and relevant information quickly. This will save you time and improve your work.

• Plagiarism Checker : Ensure your essay maintains originality with Smodin’s plagiarism detection tool. This feature helps maintain academic integrity by checking your work against vast databases.
• Auto Citation : Cite your sources accurately without the hassle. Smodin’s auto-citation tool ensures your references are in the right format and meet your academic institution’s rules.
• Text Shortener : If your explanatory essay is too long, use Smodin’s AI writer as an essay shortener. It will help you cut your content without losing key details. This helps keep your essay clear and relevant.
• Text Rewriter : Helps paraphrase existing content, ensuring uniqueness and a fresh perspective.
• Summarizer : The Summarizer boils down long articles into short summaries. They are perfect for making an efficient outline or conclusion.

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Disappointment

In high school I took part in many math competitions; the hardest (and therefore to my teenage mind the only ones that counted) were the competitions relating to the international mathematical olympiad (IMO). In Melbourne there was a program of competition and training that culminated in a nine hour exam spread over two days to determine the makeup of the Australian IMO team. I remember very well the first time I took the exam. It was 1987, and the IMO was to be held that year in Cuba. As I sat at my carrel in the Morris library, I took the February sunlight for fortune smiling on me, inspiration spilled liberally from my Pelikano steel nib fountain pen, and I went home at the end of the second day in a blur of fatigue and self-congratulation. Six weeks later a pregnant manila envelope arrived in the mail. From its girth alone I knew I had aced the exam and won my rightful spot on the team. Before even opening the envelope I could see myself in the green woolen team blazer with the Australian coat of arms embroidered on the breast pocket, and by the time I found a letter opener I was shaking hands with Fidel Castro.

The envelope contained…sixty-odd sheets of loose-leaf paper, no invitation, no cover letter: my exam papers, bloodstained with question marks, lines through paragraphs, squiggles of uncomprehension, Xs and Os. My stomach fell. I blushed. In a fraction of a second I rewrote or recolored dozens of memories and fantasies from the recent past and future, and became intensely conscious of and embarassed by my vanity and foolishness. What I now find remarkable was the speed and scope of my transformation; the analogy that comes to mind is being struck by a speeding car.

So how does one deal with disappointment? Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents identifies three typical measures:

powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.

If these are the typical responses, are there any others? Before trying to answer this it might be helpful first to articulate what disappointment actually is , and then to ask what it’s for . Evidently, disappointment is a form of mental suffering. It is so unpleasant that we can experience it in a host of physiological dimensions. Profound mental suffering involves a complex array of interactions between any number of processes and subsystems, both conscious and unconscious, involving both the brain and the limbic system. The suffering that arises from disappointment is that that accompanies disruption: disappointment causes a certain kind of shake-up or realignment of our worldview and self-image and consequently of our priorities; this disruption can be so great that we sometimes emerge from it a very different person.

According to certain schools of cognitive science (e.g., Minsky’s Society of Mind model) the idea of a “self” as a unified, indivisible entity is an oversimplification; rather (they suggest) a self is an uneasy federation of simpler subsystems (sometimes termed “agents”) with their own local goals and interests, which are frequently in competition with one another. Under ordinary circumstances stability is achieved by a complicated system of temporary alliances, detentes, three-way standoffs, and so forth. Our subjective sense of the unified self is—in itself!—also a source of stability. Sometimes a dramatic change in (real or perceived) external circumstances—an unforseen event, an unpleasant discovery—can lead to a cascade of disruptions to this order. This is the mechanism of disappointment, and why it is so painful; it is both a crisis and an opportunity—in Homer Simpson’s inspired terminology, a crisitunity.

Disappointment measures in pain the gap between reality and what we want the world to be. Disappointment matters. It matters because we don’t actually live in the real world. We live in our heads, in a mental world of assumptions, recollections, anticipations, desires and conjectures. And even when we do meet reality, it’s a mistake to think that what our senses feed us is objective, unfiltered, unsorted. Rather we operate according to an interrogative protocol—we ask the world questions to confirm what we already “know” (or, more accurately: hope), and only when we get an unpleasant surprise do we take a closer look. As Proust says,

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

In his famous paper, “How not to prove the Poincaré Conjecture,” John Stallings writes about an adventure in his mathematical life, how he discovered a proof of the Poincaré Conjecture but later found it to be mistaken. He goes so far as to describe this episode as a “sin;” but the sin was not in the mistake per se, rather it was his resistance to recognizing it as such. He writes,

There are two points about this incorrect proof worthy of note …(t)he second…is that I was unable to find flaws in my ‘proof’ for quite a while, even though the error is very obvious. It was a psychological problem, a blindness, an excitement, an inhibition of reasoning by an underlying fear of being wrong. Techniques leading to the abandonment of such inhibitions should be cultivated by every honest mathematician.

Few mathematicians are as honest or as generous as Stallings in sharing their own stories of disappointment. This is because disappointment often comes wrapped in shame, because our goals are inextricable from our personal and social attachments and relationships. Convention and social norms dictate that any display of human weakness or failing is “unprofessional.” We’re not supposed to admit it when we feel stupid, or underappreciated, or jealous, or that we cared so much about something that when it didn’t go our way we felt shattered. Techniques leading to the abandonment of such inhibitions should be cultivated by every honest mathematician.

Disappointment takes many forms; a partial list from my personal history includes:

being un- or under-acknowledged in a colleague’s paper or talk;

being scooped;

missing out on a job/prize/conference invitation;

having a prospective student work with someone else;

having a potential advisor turn me down as a student;

having a promising line of attack on a problem fail to pan out;

discovering an error in an amazing proof;

having a paper go unread or a book go unreviewed;

seeing an admired senior colleague behave badly;

realizing that I haven’t lived up to my own standards of behavior;

discovering that success, when it came, was not all I hoped it would be.

The last one, perhaps, deserves elaboration. Some acute disappointments in my career were the result of getting what I thought I wanted: a paper in a fancy journal; a job offer; tenure; an invitation to talk at a fancy conference. I don’t mean to diminish the value of such things at all, or the challenges (personal or structural) many people must overcome to achieve them; much about the way such “rewards” are distributed in academic culture is unfair, often in systematic ways, and it should be the goal of all of us to point this out and work to change it wherever we can. I also don’t mean to suggest that success has been joyless; the opposite is true. Nevertheless it is the case that sometimes when we get what we think we want, we discover that these things weren’t what we thought they were, and (more importantly) that we are not who we though we were. When disappointment accompanies success it is worth paying special attention to. If we get what we want but it doesn’t bring us fulfillment, then what’s really going on? In my experience, it has only been at the point of my posing this question that I have acquired insight, and the agency to really change things or come to terms with them.

It took a month of pain after the manila envelope arrived before curiosity got the better of me and I opened it again. And a remarkable thing happened. The exam pages: my answers, the blots, the corrections, the red ink, the comments, were exactly as before. But time and some strange alchemy of which disappointment itself was the catalyst had altered their meaning. An actual human being had taken the time to read my work and share valuable feedback with me. My annotated exam was no longer a certificate of failure, it was a how-to manual: it was about how to prove an inequality by leveraging the convexity of a cleverly chosen auxiliary function, or how to recast a geometric figure in terms of complex numbers and understand it with algebra. These math problems weren’t “problems” at all: they were windows into mathematics itself. And the manila envelope wasn’t a slap in the face, it was a gift; but to see it as a gift I had to see it with new eyes. I never got to Cuba, but I’d taken my first steps on a longer and far more interesting and rewarding journey that continues to this day.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Kathryn Kruse for her extensive feedback on and advice about an early draft of this essay.

Danny Calegari is a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago. His email address is [email protected] .

Article DOI: 10.1090/noti2782

The Early Career Section offers information and suggestions for graduate students, job seekers, early career academics of all types, and those who mentor them. Krystal Taylor and Ben Jaye serve as the editors of this section. Next month’s theme will be Math and the Real World.

Photo of Danny Calegari is courtesy of Danny Calegari.