Art of Academic Editing Paragraphs

Paragraphs

Each sentence in a well-crafted paragraph contributes to the unity, coherence and development of the paragraph. These principles particularly apply to lengthy and complex documents such as a research thesis, where efficient, informative and persuasive writing is vital.

The paragraph one of the most important means you have at your disposal for making arguments in your academic work. Getting paragraphing right will greatly assist the creation of an effective thesis or journal article.

"For me, a paragraph ... is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity."

Paul Auster, author

Good academic writing is always carefully organised, and demonstrates particular attention to paragraph structure. A well-written paragraph is not a random collection of sentences; it is a unit of thought, argument or evidence made up of a group of related sentences that focus on one central idea.

In this module I would like to show you how you can craft excellent paragraphs that enable you to produce persuasive and readable work. By the end of this module, you should be able to recognise the characteristics of a good academic paragraph and put those principles into action in your own work.

Let's think about creating powerful paragraphs

Academic writing should be rigorous. Attending to paragraph structure can help you achieve rigour and logic. Remember that you are always thinking of the prospective reader. They need some guidance and some patterns to help them follow what you have written.

What am I trying to say in my whole piece of academic writing?

How can I ensure that I have segmented all the different parts of what I am trying to say into a logical sequence of information that the reader will follow through to end?

By the end, I want the reader to be convinced. How can I use the editing process to check that I can convince them? Editing requires you to take the point of view of the reader. Use that point of view to ensure that each paragraph fulfils its information delivery requirement.

A paragraph discusses and elaborates a particular point to support your overall argument. Most effective academic paragraphs will contain between four and eight sentences. An academic paragraph will not contain just one sentence, because that tends not to allow you to build your argument.

At the editing stage, please look closely at your theme sentences. These sentences are your way of ensuring that you have a logical and clear framework that helps the reader to follow the argument. During editing, assess your theme sentences to ensure that they are providing signposts for the reader.

While a paragraph must not have more than one main idea, that idea must be fully explained. Do not leave the reader with questions. SO:  all the sentences after the theme sentence describe, illustrate and exemplify the point introduced by the theme sentence. In doing this, you provide enough for the reader to analyse your point fully.

Think of your reader

A reader is holding his/her breath when reading your paragraph. They are expecting it to come to a logical point of completeness within a reasonable time. Do not cause them to suffer run out of both breath and patience by allowing your paragraph to run on too long. Long paragraphs are indicative of indiscipline and lack of reader-centricity.

A paragraph for every idea

Every new idea you introduce into your text requires the space of a paragraph. That’s why random structure is unhelpful. Develop single ideas into sentences, then related sentences into paragraphs. Editing your work with this in mind helps you to better understand the meaning of your research, as you look to ensure that each of your paragraphs has crystalline, poetic integrity.

The syllogism helps to achieve the natural logic that you are looking for. This way, the idea unfolds in a way that a reader can easily follow.

Here is a paragraph written by Bertrand Russell:

The evils of the world are due to moral defects quite as much as to lack of intelligence. But the human race has not hitherto discovered any method of eradicating moral defects.  Intelligence, on the contrary, is easily improved by methods known to every competent educator. Until some method of teaching virtue has been discovered, progress will have to be sought by improvement of intelligence rather than of morals.

The Russell paragraph broken down:

  • Theme sentence that is in effect the “conclusion”: The evils of the world are due to moral defects quite as much as to lack of intelligence.
  • Premise 1: But the human race has not hitherto discovered any method of eradicating moral defects.
  • Premise 2: Intelligence, on the contrary, is easily improved by methods known to every competent educator.
  • Premise 3: Until some method of teaching virtue has been discovered, progress will have to be sought by improvement of intelligence rather than of morals.

Note that the premises link to each other via words such as “but” and “on the contrary”.

Paragraphs may have different purposes. Here are some of the main ones:

  • General to specific – introductory paragraphs [informative and persuasive]
  • Goal-setting – establishing the scope and limits of the research [informative]
  • Temporal – chronological paragraphs, usually descriptions of the time-based stages of experimental methodology [informative]
  • Comparisons and contrasts – linked pattern-identifying paragraphs that reveal new information by finding points of similarity or difference in parts of your data [persuasive]
  • Synthesis paragraphs – new knowledge arising from your research (or from a literature review) is explicitly laid out [persuasive]

An argument is a logically connected series of reasons, statements and evidence used to support or establish an idea or point of view.

A critical argument allows the reader to judge the strengths and weaknesses of the idea because all the required evidence is clearly laid out.

Editing for critical argument:

  • Read the paragraph critically and ask:  What is the point of this paragraph?
  • If there is more than one point, put the other points into their own paragraph.
  • Ensure that the main point is indicated in the theme sentence.
  • Ensure every sentence refers to the point in the theme sentence and illustrates and develops that point.
  • Ensure that key words are at the front of the sentence (not authors or names).

The "Reverse outlines" editing technique, devised by Rachael Cayley, Senior Lecturer at the School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto, is really useful to help ensure that your paragraph structures are working well.

Use this to technique to reveal problems during your structure edit.

Reference: Rachael Cayley material.

Steps in reverse outlining

  1. Number your paragraphs.
  2. Identify the theme of each paragraph. At this point, you can also note the following:
    • Is there a recognisable theme sentence?
    • How long is the paragraph? (should be 4-8 sentences)
    • Does the theme seem sufficiently developed?
    • Is there more than one theme in the paragraph?
  3. Arrange these topics in an outline document (the easiest way is in a table structure).
  4. Analyse the outline, assessing the logic (where elements have been placed in relation to one another) and the proportion (how much space is devoted to each element).
  5. Use this analysis to create a revised outline.
  6. Use this revised outline to reorganise your text.
  7. Go back to your answers to the first two questions in point 2 to help you create theme sentences and cohesion in your paragraphs.

Please examine this original academic paragraph. As you will see, it requires editing. The name of the country being discussed has been altered.

My thesis presents a conflict analysis framework of Terrorism in the context of Incognita, the present research undertakes an analytical study of the issue of Terrorism in Incognita conflict and examines the root causes of the state of terrorism. Through conflict analysis processes, the thesis introduces an argument beyond the mainstream empirical assumptions and the general perceptions clustered with the issue of terrorism in Incognita. [Two sentences]

Please consider whether this new paragraph adheres to the principles of good paragraph structure that we have been examining:

The Cryptoland state of Incognita has experienced prolonged conflict resulting in thousands of deaths since 1980.  This thesis presents a conflict analysis framework for understanding terrorism in Incognita. The root causes of the conflict will be examined first. The thesis then introduces an argument beyond current mainstream empirical assumptions and general perceptions. The essence of this argument is xxx [At least five sentences]

Quiz