Compared to introductions and conclusions, body paragraphs are easy. But that’s only in comparison: body paragraphs present challenges of their own.
A body paragraph has three goals:
Compared to introductions and conclusions, body paragraphs are easy. But that’s only in comparison: body paragraphs present challenges of their own.
A body paragraph has three goals:
To present a point.
To prove the point.
To make the worth of the point plain.
It’s the middle one of these that proves the most difficult. Presenting a point is relatively easy: you make your assertion of it your topic sentence. Let’s use the naked mole rats.
Naked mole rats, or Heterocephalus glaber, possess a highly unusual set of traits. First, as the name implies, they are hairless. More than that, however, their thin, short legs allow them to move equally quickly forward and backward; their protuberant teeth assist them in digging; and their lips seal behind their teeth to ensure that their mouths stay free of dirt while they work. In short, the naked mole rat is a perfect example of effective evolution.
Because of the way this introduction is structured, you know that you will want to discuss in detail the assertions you make in sentences 2 through 4. Remember that each body paragraph can only discuss one topic; logically, start with topic 1, their hairlessness.
The naked mole rat’s lack of hair offers it significant advantages in its daily life.
This is almost the perfect first sentence. It makes a clear assertion simply and with no fuss (notice also that it uses a big word amongst little ones to dress it up). Now what you need to do is prove this assertion. You have to offer some evidence; your word is not enough:
The naked mole rat’s lack of hair offers it significant advantages in its daily life. Because they have no hair, the mole rats can move quickly in their narrow dirt burrows, and they take fewer work breaks to groom themselves.
But be careful! Evidence on its own is not enough. Because your reader knows nothing about your topic, they have no idea how these two sentences fit together. You have to tell them:
The naked mole rat’s lack of hair offers it significant advantages in its daily life. Because they have no hair, the mole rats can move quickly in their narrow dirt burrows, and they take fewer work breaks to groom themselves. Thus, they are more likely to survive predator attacks, and they work more speedily.
It is this final sentence that proves the point. You can’t do without evidence, but the evidence must come with an explanation.
Each body paragraph should also anticipate and answer the question, “So what?” That is, why are you telling readers this; what point does it make? In some paragraphs, the answer will be obvious, but in some it won’t. In the paragraph above, for example, you’ll notice that although you’ve proven your point, you haven’t told us why we should care about that point in the first place: you have not told us, “So what?” You need a sentence to do that:
The naked mole rat’s lack of hair offers it significant advantages in its daily life. Because they have no hair, the mole rats can move quickly in their narrow dirt burrows, and they take fewer work breaks to groom themselves. Thus, they are more likely to survive predator attacks, and they work more speedily. Their evolved characteristic ensures their longevity and their utility.
Now the reader knows why you’ve told them all that: they see how it relates to your larger thesis.
Now, the fact that each body paragraph should only discuss one point doesn’t mean that they are all three or four sentences long. While it is absolutely essential that a single paragraph contain only elements that you have ensured are clearly related to its topic, the words “discuss” and “related” are wide. Consider, for example, this paragraph:
The confusion over the connection between Jekyll and Hyde may have another gemellogical root, as well. Twins joined at the forehead or sharing one head (janiceps twins) were not unknown in the nineteenth century. In fact, they were common enough to be included in two series of Italian eighteenth- or nineteenth-century wax teaching models of fetus in utero (fig. 3), and at least one nineteenth-century janiceps skeleton has been preserved. Janiceps twins rarely survive ex utero, for the simple reason that they share a brain. And here, perhaps, one finds a source for Jekyll’s “two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness,” for his sense of himself as both an actor in and an observer of Hyde’s deeds (49, 53), and for those “shared…phenomena of consciousness.” Jekyll quite literally does not know who he is. Nearly a hundred years ago G.K. Chesterton pointed out that “The real stab of the story is not in the discovery that the one man is two men; but in the discovery that the two men are one man” (72). Certainly in purely mental terms, this is correct: Jekyll and Hyde may have different shells, but they have a mind in common. Jekyll imagines Hyde in advance as “a second form and countenance…, nonetheless natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul” (49-50). Jekyll’s profound split, so long “a beloved daydream” (49), is not really a separation, because it is no escape from the self: it is worth remembering that Hyde’s first reappearance after the Carew murder occurs solely as a result of Jekyll’s thoughts (58).
I think we can agree that this is a very long paragraph. You will notice, though, that everything in it relates to the first sentence. It defends that sentence, discusses it, and expands on it, but it never departs from it. Good paragraphs can contain many elements, provided all those elements are push-pinned by the topic – long paragraphs are really just short paragraphs, only longer.
Finally, remember that you have to transition in and out of paragraphs, so that they feel connected. Some people like to put transition sentences at the end of a paragraph, some like to put them at the beginning: the choice is up to you. In either case, though, remember that a paragraph transition contains something of each paragraph. Think of it as knitting: the transition picks up a thread from the paragraph it’s leaving and knits it into the beginning of the paragraph it’s leading to. If you do this, you are moving your reader gently along, with the result that they scarcely notice their progressing. For example:
Moreover, at this time parasite twins could not be separated; the risks were too great. Thus each twin was, literally, dependent on the other. This sheds some light on Hyde’s death at the end of “The Last Night.” As even Jekyll comments, Hyde hardly seems the type for permanent self-destruction: “his love of life is wonderful….when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him” (61). Nonetheless, Hyde does choose suicide as his hunters close in. Yet if we read him as a parasite twin, this ending makes more sense: his autosite protector dead, he cannot survive alone. Indirectly, he dies because of that.
The confusion over the connection between Jekyll and Hyde may have another root in twin studies, as well. Twins joined at the forehead or sharing one head (janiceps twins) were not unknown in the nineteenth century…
The transition sentence here is at the beginning of the second paragraph. Notice the way it picks up the thread from the previous paragraph with “the confusion over the connection between Jekyll and Hyde” and “twin studies,” but moves on with “another” and “as well.”
There is one final point to consider. Try not to end your paragraphs (any of them) with a quotation from another source. An essay is in many ways a fight for power (Who will be more powerful, the evidence for or the evidence against? Are you powerful enough to prove your argument?), and as anyone who has a sibling knows, the person with the power is the person who speaks loudest. If you end your paragraph with a quotation from someone else, you are allowing them to speak loudly while you remain silent. But your essay is all about you and how smart you are! So don’t let a source steal your power. In your essays, the sources support your assertions; they don’t prove them. You have the last word.
Evolution is a powerful demonstration not just of humanity’s development, but of the miraculousness of that development. Its initial champion, Charles Darwin, argued that “Man cannot know who he is without knowing what he was: only then will he know how far he has come and what a marvel he is” (3). Darwin understood that evolution makes as great an argument for the wonder of humanity as does religion.
Woah, the reader thinks, this writer is smart. Who cares about that Darwin guy?
Make sure that each body paragraph has three sentences. If it doesn’t, you’re missing one of the necessary elements.
If your paragraph seems muddled or pointless, try reading it through one sentence at a time to make sure all the sentences are relevant and necessary. If all else fails, put each sentence on a separate line and try to see if they work better in a different order, or if you can cut some.
To create a “so what?” sentence, ask yourself, “Why am I telling the reader this?” or “What’s my point? Where is it all going?”
If your paragraph is longer than one full double-spaced typed page, it is probably too long. Look for somewhere to cut it in half, or check to make sure that everything in it is necessary and related to the main point.
The easiest way to transition from one paragraph to another is with a transition word. The smoothest way to transition from one to another is with a transition sentence.
The sentence a writer is most likely to leave out is the “so what?” sentence. This is because a writer knows the answer to that question: it’s his essay. Remember to read like your reader, not like the writer, to spot absences.