College Admission Essays for Dummies by Brenner Jessica;Woods Geraldine; & Geraldine Woods

Author:Brenner, Jessica;Woods, Geraldine; & Geraldine Woods [Brenner, Jessica & Woods, Geraldine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2021-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Punctuating Your Points with Paragraphs

In the introduction to this chapter, I hint at the two most important reasons to create a paragraph break: logic and drama. Time for more detail on the Big Two.

I describe logic and drama as two separate categories of paragraph breaks, but in practice they overlap. Dramatic paragraph breaks must occur at logical spots in your essay — moments when emphasis changes, the speaker or topic shifts, or a new stage in the story arrives.

Including some logic

Move this book out, slightly beyond the focus range of your eyes. What do you see? Clumps of gray print, also known as paragraphs. Even before you read a word, you have an idea how many ideas are contained in this chapter, just by estimating the number of paragraphs. In general, one important idea equals one paragraph.

Move the book back in and start to read. You see immediately that a paragraph break stops the flow of words, not greatly, as a new heading or a new chapter does, but briefly. If you’re reading aloud or speaking, a paragraph break comes across as a short pause, longer than a quick breath at the end of a sentence or the even quicker breath of a comma.

The paragraph break shows you that it’s time for something new — another example, a change of story line, a shift in location or person, or a further link in a chain of thought. If you’re writing the essay based on an outline, each new letter or number in the outline turns into a paragraph in your text.

Figure 11-1 shows an example of an outline for an essay about your desire to be your school’s mascot.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 11-1: An example outline for your essay.

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