Part III Building Paragraphs and Essays

Now that you’ve learned a writing process with which you can confidently tackle any writing task—from a brief memo to a major term paper—it’s time to turn our attention to the specific building blocks of most academic assignments. In Part 3, we’ll examine the fundamentals of writing effective paragraphs and effective essays.

Regardless of what you’re writing, the first step is to determine your topic, your purpose, and your audience. Inexperienced writers sometimes hurriedly skip this step, and as a result, they struggle to complete a writing task successfully. If you simply copy a topic from the assignment instructions and start writing straightaway, you have likely not considered the topic deeply enough. In most cases, the topic stated in the assignment instructions is much too broad. To adequately explore it, you’d need to write an entire book! Your instructor expects you to narrow the topic to find a specific, engaging topic suitable for a short essay. In Chapter 10, we’ll explore how to develop a suitable narrow topic; with that starting point, you’ll find the rest of the essay-writing process much easier.

In Chapter 11, you’ll learn the basics of writing effective paragraphs. A paragraph is not simply a bunch of sentences strung together: an effective paragraph has focus, structure, a controlling idea, and logical development. Sometimes, you’ll be required to submit a single paragraph, in which case a well-constructed paragraph is essential. More often, you’ll use the tips in Chapter 11 to write the body paragraphs of essays. Whether you’re writing one stand-alone paragraph or a long essay, read this chapter closely, and complete the practice exercises to develop your paragraph-writing skills. After all, paragraphs are the building blocks of essays, reports, research papers, dissertations, and books. If the paragraphs themselves aren’t effective, the larger text won’t be successful either.

In Chapters 12 to 14, you’ll work through the main parts of the standard essay structure: the introductory paragraph, the thesis statement, the body paragraphs, and the concluding paragraph. The thesis statement is the single most important sentence in an essay, and once you have developed a good thesis statement, the rest of the essay will follow more easily.

When writing body paragraphs, you’ll use the standard paragraph structure introduced in Chapter 11, but body paragraphs require some additional considerations to ensure they will work well with the other paragraphs of an essay. Introductory and concluding paragraphs have their own specific purposes and, as a result, their own special structures. Put all these building blocks together, and you’re on your way to writing a successful essay!

The standard essay structure introduced in Chapters 12 to 14 is the foundation of all post-secondary essays, whether you’re writing a short four-paragraph essay on a final exam or a two-hundred-page dissertation to earn a PhD. This standard structure is the foundation of personal essays, expository essays, analysis essays, argumentative essays, and research papers. Therefore, we encourage you to read through Part 3 in its entirety, completing the practice exercises along the way. You will likely return to certain sections again and again, each time you tackle a new essay assignment.