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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs


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© 1999, 2007, 2008, 2010

ClearWriter

A division of Communications Development Incorporated

For information about ClearWriter’s instructional materials and programs, email

[email protected], visit www.clearwriter.com or write to:

Fourth Floor

1050 Thomas Jefferson Street NW

Washington, DC 20007Tel: 202-775-2183

Fax: 202-775-2135

For more techniques for writing great paragraphs, see Bruce Ross-Larson’s book,

Powerful Paragraphs, published by W.W. Norton.


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs

Bruce Ross-Larson

ClearWriter

Washington, DC


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iv How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Contents

An approach to paragraphs vi

1 Unify each paragraph around the point 1

Be clear about your point 2Make sure every sentence bears on the point 6

Work with your writing to unify each paragraph around one point 10

2 Bind a paragraph’s sentences in a linear flow 11

Repeat a key term 12

Count the elements 16

Link your sentences by signaling what’s to come 20

Subordinate one idea to another 24

Repeat a sentence structure 28

Work with your writing to bind the sentences of your paragraphs 32

Contents


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Contents v

3 Make your points in compelling ways 33

Lead with the point and support it 34

Lead with the point, conclude with a comment 38

Lead with the point, join details using conjunctions 42

Introduce the subject, conclude with the point 46

Start with a question, answer it immediately 50

Undermine a premise at the end of a paragraph 54

Set off a list with bullets 58

Work with your writing to develop new kinds of paragraphs 62

4 Link your paragraphs 65

Repeat a word from the preceding paragraph 66

Order paragraphs chronologically 68

Announce an example 70

Ask a question and answer it 72

Ask a question about the preceding paragraph 74

Undermine the point of the preceding paragraph 76

Work with your writing to create smooth transitions 78

Appendix A More ways to develop a paragraph 81

Appendix B More transitions 95

Appendix C Other kinds of paragraphs 101

Appendix D Sources of exemplary paragraphs 107

Appendix E Recommended solutions 109


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vi How to Write Powerful Paragraphs An approach to paragraphs

Many writers think of paragraphs as a collection of sentences framed by the

Tab and Enter keys, running perhaps 10 or 12 lines. Few have the language

to describe what’s good—or bad—about a paragraph. This book shows you

what it means for a paragraph to be unified, coherent, and well developed.

The idea here is to give you a way of looking at paragraphs that will changethe way you write.

A paragraph is unified if each sentence is clearly related to the point—

coherent if you make it obvious to your reader how each sentence is linked

to the point. You can make the link more obvious by repeating key words

and phrases. And you can change the structure of your sentences to reveal

parallel or subordinate ideas. These techniques do more than make your

paragraphs coherent—they also give them pace.

A paragraph is well developed if its sentences unfold in a way that makes

your argument perfectly clear to the reader. One of the best ways to do this

is to express the point of the paragraph as a general statement in the first

sentence and then to support it in subsequent sentences with details and

examples. Used for perhaps half to two-thirds of all paragraphs in expository

writing, this model is the most common. Some of the other ways are to

conclude with the point, to phrase the point as a question and answer, and

to undermine an argument to make the opposite point. Deciding how todevelop a paragraph depends on the details, examples, and comments you

have to support your point.

An approach to paragraphs


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs An approach to paragraphs vi i

To help you write more powerful paragraphs, the four sections of this

workbook show you how to:

Make a point and unify a paragraph’s sentences around that point.

Use the traditional rhetorical devices to bind your sentences tightly in a

coherent flow.

Arrange those sentences to develop the strongest possible support for yourpoint.

Link your paragraphs by creating smooth transitions between them.

By doing these four things, you will enliven your writing and make your

arguments clear to your readers.


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs 1

Writers rarely take the time to figure out the subject of paragraphs

before they write them. But only by knowing the subject can you

make a strong point about it. And only with a strong point can you

assess whether all of a paragraph’s sentences are related to it.

1 Unify each paragraph around the point


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2 How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Unify each paragraph around the point

In this paragraph, the subject is circled, and the point is underlined.

At first the Internet was seen as the making of the media business in

the last century. It was going to slash costs: media products, unlike

most retail goods, can be delivered directly down wires, so theInternet would eliminate the need for factories and distribution

networks. It was going to boost revenues: previously inaccessible

markets would become reachable and data collection would make

advertising more valuable. And it was going to lower barriers to

entry, generating a crop of healthy new companies.

The subject is the Internet. The point, clear in the first sentence, is

that the Internet was supposed to improve the media industry. Each

successive sentence supports that point.

Be clear about your point


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3How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Unify each paragraph around the point

Circle the subject and underline the point.

A hero sandwich deflected a robber’s bullet and may have saved the life of

a Brooklyn man, José Fana. When a young man entered Fana’s East New

York deli, whipped out a handgun, and opened fire, Fana used a sandwich

he had just made to shield his face. Fana was treated at Jamaica Hospital

and released. The hero sandwich was wrapped in paper and topped with

lettuce, tomato, mustard, and mayonnaise.


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5

Circle the subject and underline the point.

In 2006, almost 500 million people, about 9 percent of the world’s population,

were more than 60 years old. That number will nearly triple by 2030,

according to a recent report. As life expectancy rises and birthrates slow,

the proportion of the elderly in the population is growing fast, particularly in

developing countries. As a result, systems of caring for the elderly—such as

pensions—are being strained, putting old people in financial jeopardy and

limiting economic growth. The report recommends that countries diversify

government-dominated support systems for the elderly by encouraging a

greater reliance on personal savings and the management of old-age funds

by the private financial sector.

How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Unify each paragraph around the point


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After you’ve written a paragraph, check to make sure each sentence

supports the point. Too often sentences are loosely related to the

subject of the paragraph, but not tied to the point. Below, the

subject is again circled and the point is underlined. Does each

successive sentence elaborate on the point? A Y indicates asentence that clearly supports the point, an N a sentence that is

unrelated, and a ? one that is questionable.

The lifeblood of a Chinese company is guanxi—connections. Pene-

trating layers of guanxi is like peeling an onion: first come

connections between people with ancestors from the same province

in China; then people from the same clan or village; finally, the family.

Y It does not matter much whether a Chinese businessman is in

Hong Kong or New York, he will always operate through guanxi.

Y But these networks do not enforce conformity. ? Chinese

tend to be far less concerned with consensus than the Japanese.

N As long as they honor their word and look after their own, they

can do whatever they want. N

The second and third sentences clearly support the point that

connections are the lifeblood of a Chinese company. The fourth

might be sliding into another point—and could open anotherparagraph. The fifth and sixth sentences deal with this second,

albeit related, point—and undermine the paragraph’s coherence.

Make sure every sentencebears on the point


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7How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Unify each paragraph around the point

Fill the box after each sentence with a Y, N, or ? to indicate a clear,

unclear, or questionable link between the sentence and the point

of the paragraph.

Although ranchers claim that wolves will devastate the sheep industry in

the West, studies show that wolves kill far less than 1 percent of the sheep

available to them. Ranchers also face a declining American demand for wool

products, as synthetics become more popular and less expensive.

The number of wolf-caused sheep deaths would have to be almost 30

times higher than predicted before it matched the number of deaths

caused by ovine ineptitude. For instance, more Montana sheep

starved to death in 2007 because they rolled over onto their backs and

were unable to get up.


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Again, fill the boxes with a Y, N, or ? .

Winston Churchill had other human failings. He was a more or less faithful

husband, but a bad father. He had deplorable taste in friends, was

in general a bad judge of men, whether politicians or generals, and

surrounded himself with chancers and mountebanks, from Beaverbrook to

Birkenhead to Brendan Bracken. His wife, Clementine, was a much

better judge of character. It is hard to fault the almost admiring

Boston-Irish description of him as “a fine two-handed drinker,” Joseph

Kennedy’s phrase. He is an icon venerated by British politicians and

American columnists.


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9

Again, fill the boxes with a Y, N, or ?.

Businesses do not have a natural propensity to do good. What is natural for

them is to minimize costs and maximize profits. Although this self-

interested competition adds in aggregate to the common wealth, it is no

guarantee that individual companies will not rape the environment, indulge

in slavery, or rip off their customers. Respecting the environment has

become an issue of vital importance in the 2000s.

How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Unify each paragraph around the point


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Take a sample of your writing and select several paragraphs.

Identify the subject and point of each, circling the subject and

underlining the point. If you cannot easily identify the subject, you

have a problem. And if you cannot easily determine the point, try

rewriting the paragraph around a single idea that makes a strongstatement about your subject.

Now take the same paragraphs and identify sentences that clearly

support your point, those that might support the point if written

differently, and those that are clearly unrelated. For sentences with

questionable or weak links to your point, try rewriting them to link

them more clearly—or take them out.

Work with your writing to unify eachparagraph around one point


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A paragraph is unified if each sentence is clearly related to the

point—coherent if you make it obvious how each sentence is linked

to the point. You can make the link more obvious by repeating key

words and phrases. You can also use transitional words and phrases

to enumerate and coordinate the paragraph’s sentences. And youcan change the structure of your sentences to reveal parallel or

subordinate ideas. These techniques do more than make your

paragraphs coherent—they also give them pace.

2 Bind a paragraph’s sentencesin a linear flow


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12 How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Bind a paragraph’s sentences in a linear flow

Once you’ve rid a paragraph of extraneous material, try repeating a

key word or phrase to bind the sentences even more. Using different

terms for the same idea simply to avoid repetition will confuse your

readers.

Repeat a key term


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Bind a paragraph’s sentences in a linear flow 13

Here is a paragraph that does not repeat key words:

A delightful fairy tale has taken hold lately in some economic policy

circles: the economy is poised for a glorious burst of sustained,

1960s-style growth without inflation. It’s a story told by a spectrum

of influential figures, from conservatives to liberal luminaries. Like

most good fables, this one features a horrible monster who is

blocking the path to eternal happiness. That would be the chairman

of the Fed, who cannot see that the economic terrain has shifted.

Here is the same paragraph repeating key words:

A delightful fairy tale has taken hold lately in some economic policy

circles: the economy is poised for a glorious burst of sustained,

1960s-style growth without inflation. It’s a tale told by a spectrum of

influential figures, from conservatives to liberal luminaries. Like

most good fairy tales, this one features a horrible monster who is

blocking the path to eternal happiness. That would be the chairman

of the Fed, who cannot see that the economic terrain has shifted.


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15

Circle the key word and repeat it to bind the sentences of this

paragraph.

It is less than 50 years since we first talked in the United States of the two

sectors of a modern society—the public area (government) and the private

portion (business). In the past 20 years the United States has begun to talk

of a third subdivision, the nonprofit part—those organizations that

increasingly take care of the social challenges of a modern society.

How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Bind a paragraph’s sentences in a linear flow


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If you have two or three discrete details to support your point, your

readers may absorb them better if they are counted.

Here are some words that number your sentences:

The first The second The third

First Second Third

First, Next, Last,

One A second Yet another

One, Two, Three,

Count the elements


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Here is a paragraph that does not count its parts:

The yield on junk bonds did not compensate for their risks. The

market was too young to have built up a proper record of likely

default rates, especially during a recession. And a large group of

junk bond investors—the savings and loan associations—had an

extra leg up into high-yield investment because of federal insurance

of their source of cash deposits.

Here is the same paragraph with its parts counted:

The yield on junk bonds did not compensate for their risks, for two

related reasons. The first was that the market was too young to have

built up a proper record of likely default rates, especially during a

recession. The second was that a large group of junk bond

investors—the savings and loan associations—had an extra leg up

into high-yield investment because of federal insurance of their

source of cash deposits.


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Announce and number the supporting sentences of this

paragraph.

From the experience of developing countries in managing their technological

development, certain messages are clear. The technology for making a

product is not a singular element that is either created at home or bought

overseas. It is a bundle of technological elements and requirements. Also

singing out from this survey is that not all these elements have to be supplied

domestically. Many can—and should—come from overseas.


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19

Announce and number the supporting sentences of this

paragraph.

The increase in capacity is essentially due to recent changes. Fiber optic

cables are being used more frequently. These now cost much the same as

copper wire to lay down and much less to maintain, but they carry vastly

more traffic. A single fiber thinner than a hair can carry 30,000 simultaneous

telephone conversations. Switches—telephone exchanges—have moved on

from eavesdropping operators and clunky electromechanical devices to

become increasingly like computers, their costs falling and their capability

expanding inexorably.



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Revealing the relationships between sentences, transitional words

can signal continuation (and, in addition, further, furthermore,

similarly), reversal (or, but, still, despite, otherwise, even so,

nevertheless), and conclusion (so, thus, after all, in sum, in short, in

brief).

Here are some words that can signal what’s to come:

And But So

In addition Still Thus

Further Even so After all

Furthermore Nevertheless In sum

Similarly Despite In short

Accordingly Otherwise In brief

Nor Or

For example As a result

Link your sentences by signalingwhat’s to come


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Here is a paragraph that does not link its sentences:

The vastness of the project would stagger most national govern-

ments. Unlike most supersized projects, this one is being paid for

with relatively little borrowing. There will be no new taxes, and the

government will retain a sizable reserve afterward. The original

budget, $21.2 billion, was trimmed this year to $20.3. According to

the project coordinator, it will probably come in at less than that.

Here is the same paragraph with its sentences linked:

The vastness of the project would stagger most national govern-

ments. But unlike most supersized projects, this one is being paid

for with relatively little borrowing. So there will be no new taxes,

and the government will retain a sizable reserve afterward.

Furthermore, the original budget, $21.2 billion, was trimmed this

year to $20.3. And according to the project coordinator, it will

probably come in at less than that.


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Use transitional words to link the sentences of this paragraph.

Many culprits have been fingered for the 2008 housing crisis: unscrupulous

mortgage lenders, dishonest borrowers, underregulated financial

institutions. all of them played a role. too

little attention has been paid to the most fundamental cause: the contagious

optimism, seemingly impervious to facts, that often takes hold when prices

are rising. Bubbles are primarily social phenomena. until we

understand and address the psychology that fuels them, they're going to

keep forming.


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Use transitional words to link the sentences of this paragraph.

The recent commitment by Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve,

to extend the Fed's lending window to investment banks into 2009 may offer

some reassurance. investors still worry that medium-sized

American banks may be allowed to go bust. they are neither

too big nor too complex to fail. in Britain the share price of

Bradford & Bingley, a mortgage bank, sank even further, dropping a long

way below the rights-issue price and reopening debate about its future.



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Whenever two short sentences have the same subject, see whether

you can fold one into the other—to show your readers which is the

less important idea, which the more. Such folding is one of the

easiest and most effective ways of picking up the pace of your

paragraphs and tightening your sentences.

Subordinate one idea to another


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Here are two sentences that are not subordinated:

The reporters on the Post have few scruples.

It is a good newspaper.

Here are the same sentences subordinated in several ways:

Because the Post is a good newspaper, its reporters have few

scruples.

Because the reporters on the Post have few scruples, it is a good

newspaper.

Even though the reporters on the Post have few scruples, it is still a

good newspaper.

Although the Post is a good newspaper, its reporters have few

scruples.

The reporters on the Post, a good newspaper, have few scruples.

See how the meaning can change dramatically depending on the

idea subordinated and the word used to subordinate it?


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The following sentences open a paragraph that is continued on the

facing page.

It is important for every Western businessperson that Japan is now

trying to boost the yen, but unfortunately in quite the wrong way—

by further distorting its capital market and capital flows, not by

making them freer and more open. The latest concession is a

Japanese classic.


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For these three pairs of sentences, subordinate the less important

idea to the more important by collapsing each pair in a single

sentence.

Seven Japanese trust banks have “volunteered” to reduce the

purchase of foreign securities by their pension funds. They have

done this on orders from the ministry of finance.

These pension funds have been investing abroad more than 30

percent of their net intake of funds during the past seven months.They have been tempted by high interest rates and Wall Street’s bull

run.

Now they will cut overseas investment to 20 percent. They hope to

reduce capital outflows and so strengthen the yen.

Pair 1

Pair 2

Pair 3


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If sentences do similar work, they are easier to understand if they

are similar in structure. As with repeating a key word or term,

repeating a structure can strengthen the links among your

supporting sentences, and between those sentences and your

point.

Repeat a sentence structure


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This paragraph does not use parallel sentence structures:

The responses to the White House proposal on nuclear weaponry

differed widely. From Moscow there was silence. Leaders in Western

Europe were outraged. And there was a quiet word of support from

Japan’s Diet.

This one does:

The responses to the White House proposal on nuclear weaponrydiffered widely. From Moscow there was silence. From Western

Europe there was outrage. And from Japan there was a quiet word

of support.


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Make the supporting sentences parallel in structure.

History has a capricious memory, and it’s anyone’s guess how it will

remember James C. Wright Jr. of Texas. It may remember him grandly,

because he was the House Speaker who most aggressively muscled his way

into foreign policy. If he is remembered more simply, it will be as one of the

forgotten figures who served between two white-haired partisans, Thomas

P. O’Neill Jr. of Massachusetts and Newt Gingrich of Georgia. Or he may be

poignantly remembered as the forlorn man who was toppled from the

giddiest heights of American politics . . . over a book.


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Make the supporting sentences parallel in structure.

“Crash.” Stock market bulls can act as brave as they like, but they cannot

deny the terror that this simple word strikes in their breasts. They may

reassure themselves with talk of record profits or the death of inflation. All

the ways in which Wall Street’s bull run is not like others that ended in tears

is something they may point out. But the stark reality: stock markets are

notoriously fickle and can turn against you at a moment’s notice, and this

they cannot deny.



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Identify paragraphs in your writing sample that could use some

tightening, then experiment with the techniques listed here to bind

the sentences together.

Repeat.Is there a key word or phrase you could repeat to pull your readers through

the paragraph?

Announce and number.

If you have a list, or if you are presenting several ideas, announce the

number of elements you are presenting in the paragraph and then count

them.

Link.

Using the words listed on page 20, help your readers understand the

relationships between your supporting sentences.

Combine two independent clauses that have the same subject.

Subordinating one sentence to another helps your readers understand

which idea is more important. It also cuts a few words and makes your main

idea clearer.

Make sentences parallel in structure.

Sentences conveying similar ideas are easier to read if their structure is

parallel. Try rewriting a few of your sentences so that they follow a single

grammatical pattern.

Work with your writing to bind thesentences of your paragraphs


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Few writers consider how or where to make a point in a paragraph.

Most express the point in the first sentence and support it in

subsequent sentences with details and examples. While effective,

this construction becomes less so when it is overused, and more so

when alternated with other ways of making a point. Deciding howto make your point depends on the details, examples, and comments

you have to support it.

Other ways to make a point are to conclude with it, to phrase the

point as a question and answer, to undermine an argument to make

the opposite point, and to end a straightforward series of details

with a subtle (or not so subtle) comment.

3 Make your points in compelling ways


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34 How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Make your points in compelling ways

The most common way to develop a paragraph—second only to not

making a point at all—is to state the point in the first sentence and

support it in subsequent sentences with details, examples, and

comments.

Make a point.

Support the point with examples and details.

When you lead with the point, your readers can identify it

immediately, and a skimmer can pick up your line of argument by

reading the first sentence of each paragraph. This form of paragraph

development is what most of us use for two-thirds of our writing.

It becomes less effective when overused, and more when alternated

with other ways of developing a point.

Lead with the point and support it


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Make your points in compelling ways 35

Read the following paragraph:

Mr. Li likes to shroud his business maneuvers in mystery. It is entirely

plausible that he has not yet decided between a variety of different

endgames, any one of which might make him a great deal of money.

His aides maintain that buying the shares in Jardines is just another

part of Mr. Li’s expanding portfolio of investments.

The first sentence makes the point, and the second and third

sentences support that point with examples.


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Identify the point and move it to the beginning of the paragraph.

For seven decades, Congress was the government’s mostly docile rubber

stamp. Since winning the lower house last year, the opposition parties have

been trying to shape a role both for it and, with a presidential election less

than two years away, for themselves. The saga of Mexico’s bank bailout—

still unresolved, despite a supposed deal last week—has been their first real

chance to practice. Real politics is rather a new thing for Mexico.


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37

Identify the point and move it to the beginning of the paragraph.

In the 1950s, most households consisted of two parents, only one of whom

was a wage-earner. Now society is more polarized between two-earner

households and jobless single-parent families. It is hard for single mothers

to earn good incomes. In America, the second most important cause of

increased income inequality has been a change in household structure. The

proportion of families headed by women among the poorest fifth of

households has doubled over the past 60 years to around 35 percent. In

contrast, the richest fif th of households is increasingly dominated by high-

income two-earner couples: well-paid women tend to marry rich men.

How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Make your points in compelling ways


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A slight variation: lead with the point and conclude with a comment.

Make a point.

Support the point with examples and details.

Make a comment.

Concluding a paragraph with a comment can inject a bit of your

personality and, at times, humor. Comments can also put a

paragraph in perspective, create a bridge to the next paragraph, or

reinforce your point after presenting a series of facts.

Gauge how much humor, irreverence, and personal opinion your

readers will tolerate: you shouldn’t make so many comments that

you distract readers from your argument.

Lead with the point,conclude with a comment


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Most of our contributors [to the quarterly poll] remain keener on

shares than on bonds; none more so than Daiwa, another newcomer.

It has more equities in cash and less in bonds than any of the others.

It prefers shares because of rising inflationary expectations and

improving market confidence. But some investors—such as Phillips

& Drew and Lehman—have cut their exposure to non-Japanese Asian

equities, believing that the markets have already discounted a

recovery. Indeed, Phillips & Drew detects a slowdown in reformfollowing the recovery in share prices. The emerging market crisis is

gone, perhaps, but not forgotten.

The comment ends the paragraph with a personal flourish.


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Add a comment at the end of the paragraph.

Ulysses has a long history of translation. It was greeted as a great work of

literary modernism when it appeared in its highly original English in 1922.

But it was available in German and French before it was legally for sale in

Britain or the United States. Even the Latvians have their own version; the

Japanese have four. Chinese translators never got around to it.


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41

Add a comment at the end of the paragraph.

Whatever the political calculations, the economic facts are clear: women are

catching up and are making the most of America’s economic opportunities.

No wonder men feel threatened. On June 4th, Pamela Davis became the

first woman to pitch for a major league farm club in American baseball.



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If you have, say, three supporting sentences of equal weight (none

more important than the others), try linking them with also and and

in the pattern shown here (X is . . ., X is also . . ., And X is . . .).

Make a point.

Support it with a detail or example.

Add a second detail or example, using also.

Add a third, using and.

By using conjunctions and the same pronoun in each sentence, you

can stress the equality or sequence of the details, pulling your

readers through the paragraph. This works best if you have three

details.

Lead with the point,join details using conjunctions


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At first sight the virtues of teamwork look obvious. Teams make

workers happier, by giving them the feeling that they are shaping

their own jobs. They also increase efficiency, by eliminating layers

of managers whose job was once to pass orders downward. And, in

principle, they enable a company to draw on the skills and

imagination of a whole workforce, instead of relying on specialists

to watch out for mistakes and suggest improvements.

The three supporting sentences follow the pattern: X is . . ., X is

also . . ., And X is . . ..


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Emphasize a series by adding also’s and and’s .

The five directors have much in common. They share major influences—not

only Stanislavsky, but also Bertolt Brecht and Peter Brook. They

turn frequently to modern greats like Ibsen, Chekhov, and

Beckett . they are quite often drawn to opera as a way of

honing their stage skills.


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45

Emphasize a series by adding also ’s and and ’s—and remember to

watch for parallel construction.

In part, this is because Mediobanca has spun a tight web between the

country’s main industrial financial groups, leaving little room for others. As

well as 11 percent of Snia, Mediobanca owns a stake in Assicurazioni

Generali, Italy’s biggest insurer and a part owner of Gemina. It

owns bits of Ferruzzi Finanziaria, and Montedison, its chemicals arm.

then there are the bank’s stakes in Fiat, Olivetti, Pirelli, a tire

company, Italmobiliare, and GIM, a metals group.



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Occasionally, try putting the point at the end of a paragraph to

build a bit of suspense. Do this sparingly, however, because your

readers will tire of having to wait for you to get to the point.

Open with examples, details, and comments.

Make the point.

Introduce the subject,conclude with the point


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Imagine that a mad scientist went back to 1950 and offered to

transport the median family to the wondrous world of the 1990s and

to place them at, say, the 25th percentile [income] level. The 25th

percentile of 2006 is a clear material improvement over the median

of 1950. Would they accept his offer? Almost surely not—because in

1950 they were middle class, while in 2006 they would be poor, even

if they lived better in material terms. People don’t just care about

their absolute material level, they care about their level comparedwith others.

The point at the end of this paragraph brings together a series of

details.


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Identify the point and move it to the end of the paragraph.

New York Newsday, a Manhattan tabloid launched 10 years ago, published

its last issue on July 16. There was a time, in the days of Citizen Kane, when

New Yorkers could choose among 13 daily newspapers. Even in the 1990s,

an age when few cities support more than two papers, the Big Apple has

boasted four. Last week, however, the Los Angeles–based Times Mirror

company pulled the plug on one of them.


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49

Identify the point and move it to the end of the paragraph.

The technological changes that have swept across the telecommunications

industry have two distinct effects. Together, they will transform the

industry—although the pace at which they take effect will be partly set by

regulation. One is to create glut instead of the capacity shortages of the

past. The other is to reduce barriers to entry and make possible new sorts of

competition.



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Asking a question in the first line of a paragraph grabs readers’

attention and sets up your point. Using an immediate, direct answer

to make your point demonstrates a firm stance, emphasized by the

surety of a fragment.

Ask a question.

Answer it to make a point.

Support it with examples, details, and comments.

Immediate answers make you seem—merely seem—unequivocal.

They also engage your readers with a conversational tone. And

they don’t leave the answer to the reader.

Start with a question,answer it immediately


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So will squash eventually rival tennis as a spectator sport, and will

Jansher Khan and Peter Marshall become as rich and famous as

Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi? Almost certainly not. For all the

gimmicks of a glass-walled court, a special white ball, and more and

better cameras, squash remains fearsomely difficult to televise. Not

only does the ball move too fast, but the camera lens foreshortens

the action. Squash, therefore, is destined to remain a sport better

played than watched. Given its propensity for what the tennisauthorities term “audible obscenities,” that may be just as well.

The question asked in the first sentence is immediately answered

to make a point.


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Turn the point into a question and answer.

Our current system of teaching and learning is not very effective in serving

the new definition of learning. Inhibiting its effectiveness are outmoded

assumptions about who students are and about the teaching and learning

process. Classroom-based, residential institutions were developed to serve

a relatively homogeneous student population, a population quite different

from today’s students. Prior to the 1960s, college students were similar in

age (young), sex (male), ethnicity (white), and economic means (affluent).

The size of the nation’s student body was relatively small, reaching about

3.2 million in 1960. The collegiate experience, itself a homogeneous one,

constituted at that time a rite of passage with widely accepted milestones

along the way. Notions about the small liberal arts college as the best form

of higher education reflect that long past era of shared purpose in educating,

or socializing, a common student body.


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53

Turn the point into a question and answer.

Bulls wield two arguments when asked where the market is headed next.

The first is that the fall in the value of Hong Kong property is largely over,

even if China’s speculative property market is now due for a correction.

Hong Kong’s developers are largely shielded from the mainland’s excesses.

Another is that even if China’s economy is in for a bumpy year, Hong Kong

will be more than consoled for that by the buoyancy of much of the rest of

the world. Hongkong Bank reckons that Hong Kong’s economy will grow by

nearly 6 percent this year.



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Undermining at the end of a paragraph is like concluding with the

point—but in a backhanded way. It shows your understanding of an

alternative point of view—then slams the direction of the argument

into reverse.

State a premise.

Support it with examples, details, and comments.

Undermine it to make a point.

Signals for undermining are the words however, but, and yet.

Undermining can:

Highlight an opponent’s flaws or weaknesses.

Present (and refute) a common misconception.

Introduce tension or create an atmosphere of debate.

Undermine a premise at the endof a paragraph


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For many years it has been argued that the present shape of the

American corporation, in which a vast and dispersed group of

shareholders exercises little or no control over the firm’s managers,

is in some way preordained. Organizing firms like this, runs the

argument, is simply the most efficient way of adapting to the

demands of modern capitalism. This view has its alluring points, but

it is wrong.

The point appears in the last sentence and refutes the premise

explored in the two preceding sentences. The first two sentences

of the paragraph repeat the word skeptical, alerting the reader to

question the information that follows.


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Undermine the italicized premise to make an opposing point at

the end.

Berlin’s designs on becoming a center for new industries such as media and

biotechnology are promising. Some 300 small media firms have set up in or

near the city since 1994, many of them clustered around the Babelsberg film

studios, once Germany’s biggest. And several departments of Berlin’s

Humboldt University have moved to the Adlershof industrial park in an

eastern suburb, to work closely with the 200-plus technology firms that have

already moved in.


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57

Undermine the italicized premise to make an opposing point at

the end.

Jerky camera movements, shouts, cops rushing through a darkened

doorway, guns drawn. It all makes great television. “Reality-based”

programming has mushroomed in America, and it is easy to see why.

Almost everyone comes out a winner. The police look like heroes. Journalists

get a great story. TV firms get an endless stream of cheap programs. And

audiences love such in-your-face entertainment.



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With lists of numerical facts, complicated details, or recom-

mendations, it can be difficult for readers to grasp all the elements

packed into a block of text. Breaking that block into bulleted items

clarifies those elements, a good style for setting up a line of

argument.

Make a general point that you will support with several details of

equal weight in no obvious order.

Set the details off with bullets.

Why do this?

To articulate three, four, or more facts.

To relieve a dense block of text or a long series.

To set each element apart, making it easier to remember.

To highlight a list of recommendations or important ideas.

As with any unusual style, use sparingly—or it will lose itseffectiveness.

Set off a list with bullets


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A world central bank is essential for the 21st century —for sound

macroeconomic management, for global financial stability, and for

assisting the economic expansion of the poorer nations. It would

perform five functions:

• Help stabilize global economic activity.

• Act as a lender of last resort to financial institutions.

• Calm financial markets when they become jittery or disorderly.

• Regulate financial institutions, particularly the deposit banks. • Create and regulate new international liquidity.

The bullets make this paragraph easier to navigate and the five

functions easier to identify and remember.


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Break up this paragraph with bullets.

Ensuring that firms, banks, and individuals live up to their promises is a

problem in all societies, but tends to be especially severe in the weak

institutional environments that characterize many developing countries.

Three imperatives for policy are to develop a strong legal and judicial

system, but create incentives to minimize recourse to it, and explore

innovative alternative approaches to enforcement.


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61

Break up this paragraph with bullets.

The way governments convey information to citizens, especially the poor, is

often critical. So are the ways they listen to citizens and what they learn

from them. Governments can ensure a two-way exchange of information—

from society to government and from government to society. The starting

point in all this should be the poor. Countries should give the poor voice,

especially through better educational opportunities and better access to

telecommunications; learn about the poor from the poor; work through local

channels and earn the trust of the poor; and provide knowledge to the poor

in a manner they can use.



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Select a few more paragraphs from your writing sample, and see if

there is much variation in the way you’ve developed them. Is the

point obvious? Does the point appear first? Is the point phrased as

a question? Have you injected personal comments or used bulleted

lists? If your paragraphs are relentlessly similar in structure, trywriting a few of them using one of the models listed here. Then

rewrite a few more.

Lead with the point.

State the point in the first or second sentence and support it with details

and examples.

Lead with the point and conclude with a comment.

Give a leading point a twist by making a personal comment in the last

sentence.

Lead with the point and build a series.

Use also and and to emphasize a series of otherwise undifferentiated

examples or details.

Conclude with the point.

Move the point to the end for a dramatic flourish.

Ask a question.

Turn the point into a question that you answer immediately.

Work with your writing to develop newkinds of paragraphs


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Many of the devices that bind sentences within a paragraph—

repeating a key term, counting the elements, signaling what’s to

come, asking and answering questions—can do the same work

between paragraphs, creating smooth transitions from one para-

graph to the next.

4 Link your paragraphs


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66 How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Link your paragraphs

To tie two paragraphs together, repeat a word from the last

sentence of the first in the first sentence of the next.

Only 3,100 surnames are now in use in China, say researchers,

compared with nearly 12,000 in the past. An “evolutionary dwindling”of surnames is common to all societies, according to Du Ruofu of

the Chinese Academy of Sciences; but in China, he says, where

surnames have been in use far longer than in most other places, the

paucity has become acute.

To get an idea of just how acute, imagine that the combined

populations of the United States and Japan had to make do with but

five surnames. That, essentially, is how things are in China, where

the five most common surnames—Li, Wang, Zhang, Liu, and Chen—

are shared by no fewer than 350 million people. Those named Li

alone number 87 million, nearly 8 percent of the country’s Han

people, the ethnic Chinese. Another 19 surnames each cover 1

percent or more of the population.

Repeat a word from the precedingparagraph


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67

Repeat a term from the first paragraph at the beginning of the

second.

So far, RNA editing has been seen in marsupials, protozoa, slime molds,

ferns, and flowering plants. Flies do it. Mice do it. And, it now appears,

people do it.

Or rather, in most cases, their mitochondria .

Mitochondria—the cellular machines where glucose is burned for energy—

are found in all cells more sophisticated than bacteria. Indeed, many

biologists suspect that the ancestors of mitochondria actually were bacteria

that gave up an independent life symbiotically in early complex cells. They

have their own genes, in any case. And these genes are turning out to be

heavily edited.

How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Link your paragraphs


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When your paragraphs show a progression in time, use that natural

chronology to link them.

The old model was simple. Information was stored in the DNA of

genes. When needed, it was transcribed into template moleculesknown as messenger RNAs. Then a piece of machinery called a

ribosome translated the template, constructing a protein as it went.

Later the model got a bit more complicated. Genes, it was

discovered, consist of lengths of informative DNA interspersed with

apparently meaningless stretches known as introns. Before a

messenger RNA template can be copied into proteins, the introns

must be removed from it—a process known as splicing.

Now things are getting more complicated still. In the past

few years a new phenomenon has been discovered. Sometimes,

after the template has been made and the introns removed, the RNA

is edited. Sometimes, indeed, it is edited heavily. In the most extreme

examples known so far, more than half of the information needed to

make a protein has not come from the original gene. Instead, it has

been edited into the messenger RNA template.

Order paragraphs chronologically


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69

Add phrases that place the paragraphs in time.

, when relations between

China and the Soviet Union were at their worst, China provoked a series of

skirmishes, mostly along the Heilongjiang border. Harbin’s government,

believing a Soviet invasion to be imminent, set about building underground

corridors, about 3 kilometers long, that were meant to house the whole of

the city’s population in the event of an attack. These were kept meticulously

ready until 1985, when peace broke out.

, they have a new use.

The corridors have been turned into a thriving temple of free enterprise

selling the latest fashions from Hong Kong. With the shelter the corridors

offer from Harbin’s –25°C cold, and with the hundreds of jobs this

subterranean market has created, they must surely be Russia’s greatest gift

to the chilly city.



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Some paragraphs illustrate a previous point, opening with Take,

Consider, or For example.

And that is not all. Just as the new international dimension of finance

has added to some risks that may help to start a crisis—greaterinstability in currencies, faster transmission of economic

disturbances across borders, new opportunities for leverage,

increased susceptibility to the illusion of liquidity—so it has also

weakened (or anyway complicated) the traditional remedies of

economic policy. In the new world of finance, the seas are rougher

and the life rafts flimsier.

Consider the lender of last resort. Its task is to provide

liquidity at times of distress, in order to prevent isolated failures

threatening the integrity of the financial system as a whole. This is

more difficult now than it used to be, because, as a species of

monetary policy, it is subject to many of the confusions and

uncertainties discussed earlier. For instance, monetarists say that

the duty of the central bank in a crisis is not to rescue particular

institutions but to maintain the supply of “money.” But which

money? A run on banks would cause the different measures to

diverge: the amount of cash in the economy might increase even as

the amount of broad money (mainly bank deposits) shrank.

Announce an example


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71

Add a phrase to show that you are providing an example.

Attacking corporate fat cats has plenty of voter appeal, particularly when

few people have yet to feel much benefit from Britain’s economic recovery.

But there is no reason to suppose that the bulk of Labor politicians are only

pretending to hold these views. And, on their merits, none of these attacks

on profitable firms is sustainable.

, the IPPR study

criticizes the external costs and regional concentrations of supermarket

chains using criteria so unreasonable that they would condemn most large

industries. The Office of Fair Trading and the Monopolies and Mergers

Commission studied supermarkets several times but found no proof of

serious market failure or lack of competition.



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Questions suggest answers. Posing a question at the end of a

paragraph signals the reader to look for your answer in the next.

The Fed’s latest rate cut was discretion in spades. Yet economists

mostly cheered. Don’t they believe their own theory? It would be odd not to, because the theory is very plausible.

The preference for rules over discretion is based on three main

observations. First, using monetary policy to fine-tune economic

activity is extremely difficult, because of the long and unpredictable

delays between changes in interest rates and their subsequent

effects on the economy. Second, in the longer term, changes in

monetary policy affect only inflation. In other words, it is impossible

through easier monetary policy to run the economy at a permanently

higher level of activity and lower rate of unemployment. Very few

economists would dispute either of these arguments; together, they

already imply that discretion is unlikely to be successful.

Ask a question and answer it


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73

Rewrite the italicized sentences in the form of a question and

answer.

Having to announce a big drop in profits is not the way any chairman would

choose to mark his second week on the job. That was the unenviable task of

the new chief of J.P. Morgan, one of America’s oldest and mightiest banks,

on January 12. Douglas Warner disclosed that the bank’s net profit in 1994

was $1.2 billion, 29 percent less than in 1993. In spite of this Mr. Warner looks

cheerful.

He thinks the bank’s hardest work has been done. Morgan is at the

tail end of a metamorphosis that started in the late 1970s, when this starched

commercial bank saw big corporate borrowers turning in masses from bank

loans toward cheaper sources of capital, such as bonds. Under the

chairmanship of Sir Dennis Weatherstone, Morgan changed further,

concentrating resources on the fee-earning businesses, such as advising

clients, and on trading securities. By the end of 1993, noninterest income

accounted for 72 percent of Morgan’s earnings, compared with 39 percent a

decade earlier.



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Opening with a question about the previous paragraph announces

that an explanation will follow.

Platinum may be more expensive, troy ounce for troy ounce, but

gold remains the noblest metal in the eyes of chemists. Otherso-called noble metals react fairly easily with their environment—a

copper roof turns green and silver tarnishes—but gold’s ability to

resist all but the strongest acids is part of the reason it has fascinated

kings and commoners for centuries. Even platinum helps other

chemicals to react, which is why it is used as a catalyst for car

exhausts. Gold, however, remains haughtily above such common

tasks, refusing to react with the molecular masses.

But why? It is not as though gold were chemically inert. After

all, anything less than 24-carat gold is an example of gold’s ability to

bond strongly with other noble metals. The unresolved puzzle has

been why oxygen, hydrogen, and other reactive constituents of the

atmosphere—and the constituents of many acids—are hard put to

bond with gold. Theorists in Denmark now believe that they have

the answer. And their calculations do not only provide an explanation

for gold’s unique pedigree. They also point the way to designing

better catalysts.

Ask a question about the precedingparagraph


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75

Rewrite the italicized sentence in the form of a question.

Many families can afford to send their children to school only if they also

work at the same time. It is this family dilemma that makes laws against

child labor so difficult to enforce. Thus in Mexico children obtain forged

birth certificates in order to secure jobs in the maquiladora factories

operated by U.S. firms along the northern border. And it is this that makes

worthy corporate codes of conduct liable to backfire: the danger is that, far

from contributing to the end of child labor, they merely shift it to shadier

areas of the economy that are far harder to police.

The course of action companies should take is unknown. Some

initiatives appear more promising than others. One such is the effort that

Levi Strauss, a maker of jeans, has made to provide schooling for child

workers in its suppliers’ plants in Bangladesh. The provision of other

benefits, such as medical care and meals, may also be appropriate.



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By undermining the point of the first paragraph, you can propel

your argument in the next.

In principle, you might expect “greens” and businessfolk to be at

one another’s throats. A blind pursuit of profit, say environmen-talists, encourages companies to foul up the land, sea, and air.

Likewise, few things annoy the average capitalist more than rampant

tree-huggers and their ludicrous owl-protecting, business-destroying

rules. Across America, businesspeople are cheering the efforts of

Republicans in Congress to make a bonfire of green regulations.

Or so it seems. Yet a strange love affair is growing between

some firms and some parts of the green movement. In places such

as Washington and Brussels a fast-growing army of business

lobbyists is working for tougher laws. Many firms have discovered

that green laws can be good for profits—either by creating new

markets or by protecting old ones against competitors.

Undermine the point of the precedingparagraph


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77

Add a phrase or sentence at the beginning of the second paragraph

to undermine the point of the first.

The results are visible on the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest. Shops are

full of Western goods. Where grim-faced policemen once stared down pedestri-

ans, street vendors now hawk their wares. The Communist Party’s former head-

quarters in Warsaw houses Poland’s infant stock exchange. Prague’s Wenceslas

Square is festooned with colorful advertisements. Hundreds of thousands of local

entrepreneurs have started small businesses. Scores of Western law firms, con-

sultants, and accountants are setting up offices. From all appearances, business

is booming.

By most measures,

Eastern Europe is in the grip of a prolonged and savage recession. After declin-

ing by 8 percent or so last year, the five countries’ GDPs are expected to drop

another 8 percent this year. Industrial output has declined even faster, by 17 per-

cent last year and probably 11 percent this year. Like all statistics about Eastern

Europe, these figures are endlessly disputed and have to be taken with a pinch

of salt. They may paint too grim a picture because they underestimate the

growth of private business. Yet these countries are clearly in economic trauma.



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Examine the transitions between your own paragraphs. Do the

paragraphs flow? Do they play off each other? Is your line of argument

continuous or interrupted? If your paragraphs do not flow easily from

one to the next, try using one of the transition devices below.

Repeat a word from the preceding paragraph.

Pick up a word from the last sentence of one paragraph and use it in the first

sentence of the next.

Place the paragraphs in time.

Start each paragraph with a word or group of words (In the 1980s, Today,

More recently) that places two or more paragraphs in time.

Illustrate by example.

Illustrate the point of the first paragraph by presenting an example in the

second, starting with For example, or Consider X.

Ask a question and answer it.

Ask a question at the end of the first paragraph and answer it in the first

sentence of the second.

Ask a question about the preceding paragraph.Ask a question at the beginning of the second paragraph that continues with

an idea expressed in the first.

Work with your writing to create smoothtransitions


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Link your paragraphs 79

Undermine the point of the preceding paragraph.

Change the direction of argument by undermining the point of the first

paragraph in the first sentence of the second.

See appendix B for more transition devices.


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Appendix A More ways to develop aparagraph


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82 How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Appendix A

Sometimes, you may not need to elaborate on the premise you

intend to debunk, allowing you to attack it immediately.

State a premise.

Undermine it to make a point.

Support the point.

Presenting a premise in the first sentence and undermining it in

the next can set up a dramatic contrast.

Undermine a premise immediately


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Appendix A 83


This point is well taken. However, it is also misleading. The issue is

not the difficulty of writing but the fetishizing of difficulty, the belief

that fractured English, name dropping, and abstractions guarantee

profundity, professionalization, and subversion. With this belief

comes the counterbelief: lucidity implies banality, amateurism,

capitalism, and conservatism.

In this paragraph the opening premise is countered with anopposing point, which is then supported with details.


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Undermining the premise after you’ve given readers some

background allows you to fit the whole process (state premise,

support it, undermine it with a point, support point) into one

paragraph. That, however, can create long paragraphs.

Introduce the subject.

Make a point.

Support it.

This form is often used for opening paragraphs because it can make

a controversial point less conspicuous.

Make the point in the middle


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Chroniclers of the rise of the industrial worker tend to highlight the

violent episodes—especially the clashes between strikers and the

police, as in America’s Pullman strike. The reason is probably that

the theoreticians and propagandists of socialism, anarchism, and

communism—beginning with Marx and continuing to Herbert

Marcuse in the 1960s—incessantly wrote and talked of “revolution”

and “violence.” Actually, the rise of the industrial worker was

remarkably nonviolent. The enormous violence of this century—theworld wars, ethnic cleansings, and so on—was all violence from

below: and it was unconnected with the transformation of society,

whether the dwindling of farmers, the disappearance of domestic

servants, or the rise of the industrial worker. In fact, no one even

tries anymore to explain these great convulsions as part of the “crisis

of capitalism,” as was standard Marxist rhetoric only 30 years ago.

The first two sentences introduce the point, the third makes the

point, and the last two support it.

To break this paragraph up, you could put the supporting sentences

into a continuing paragraph.


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Sometimes you may want to present two sides without taking a

stand, because of ignorance or diplomacy. It is also a more neutral

version of undermining.

You may want to do this for several reasons:

To suggest the complexity of a debate.

To set up your point (choosing one side) in the following paragraph.

To avoid alienating readers when discussing a sensitive issue.

Imply the point by presenting both sides


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Predictably, Syrian, Iranian, and Arab League officials all say that

Israel is the cause of the flare-up. Turkey, they argue, may have

profited from fresh Israeli intelligence on PKK activity in Syria:

Damascus is well in range of Israeli monitoring devices atop the

Golan Heights. Israel protests that it has nothing to do with it at all.

Its minister of defense even ordered the downgrading of routine

patrols in the Golan, so as not to provoke Syria.

Here, presenting both sides of a complex issue conveys the

information without alienating readers.


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Another way to develop a paragraph is to create an analogy.

Analogies are a simple way to make topics more engaging, by

likening topic A to topic B.

Connect two subjects.

Elaborate on the connection.

Make a point about your subject based on your analogy.

Less direct than other models of development, this one expresses

the point powerfully and imaginatively. But don’t use it too often—

or you might annoy your readers by making them work too hard to

stay with you.

Connect two subjects with an analogy


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No man is a hero to his valet: the close and obedient servant sees all

the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of his master. So it is with the

financial servant and its industrial master. Weaknesses in industry

and in its political, legal, and social surroundings are observed by

the financial system in their finest detail. Worst of all, finance is less

discreet than the valet. It passes on its master’s frailties for all to

see.

The point, stated in the last line, is introduced by the analogy of

the servant to financial servant, and the master to industrial

master.


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More complicated than an analogy, a syllogism works by connecting

three things: if x = y and y = z, then x = z.

Connect one subject to a second.

Connect the second subject to a third.

Connect the first to the third.

Make a point based on the syllogism.

This is an effective rhetorical device, but like the analogy, it can

become annoying—and exhausting—if you use it too often.

Connect three subjects with a syllogism


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All the conversational devices of economics, whether words or

numbers, may be viewed as figures of speech. They are all

metaphors, analogies, ironies, appeals to authority. Figures of

speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of

a market as an “invisible hand” and the organization of work as a

“production function” and coefficients as being “significant,” as an

economist does, is giving the language a great deal of responsibility.

It seems a good idea to look hard at this language.

The point—that conversational devices of economics are not mere

frills—is restated in the last line after having been implied by the

syllogism in the paragraph.

The syllogism connects the three elements in this way:

x (conversational devices of economics) = y (figures of speech).

y (figures of speech) = z (not mere frills).

So, x (conversational devices of economics) = z (not mere frills).


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Sometimes a series of pointed questions can assert a point better

than declarative statements can.

Ask a series of questions that set up a line of argument for your

point.

Such questions are often rhetorical, but they can also set up the

structure of argument that follows.

Use only questions


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Here is a paragraph that uses only questions:

How did things break down? What public ethics reign in a land whose

police can kill 111 inmates in a raid on a security prison—and none of

the police officers go to jail, while 10 are promoted? Where the head

of the tax department has to resign for daring to levy duty on the 17

tons of booty brought back by Brazil’s footballers last summer with

the newly won World Cup? Where a state governor can walk into a

restaurant, shoot his rival, walk away to applause, and win a Senate

seat by a landslide? Where society gasps when the presidentwatches carnival arm-in-arm with a semiclad samba dancer, but

barely cares that the box he sat in belongs to racketeers?

The succession of questions implies that public ethics in Brazil are

a sad joke.


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Appendix B More transitions


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96 How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Appendix B

Counting is a simple but effective transitional device to link several

paragraphs.

Two other factors have changed the capital markets and encouraged

greater globalization. The first is the growing concentration of marketpower in the hands of institutions such as pension funds and

insurance companies, which increasingly trade securities across

borders.

The second factor is financial innovation. The securitization

of funds (allowing firms to borrow directly from markets rather than

through banks) has increased the supply of financial assets that are

taxable and hence priced openly on global markets.

Count


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Appendix B 97

Making a comment is another way to link a paragraph to the one

preceding it.

Austria, Finland, and Sweden have joined the club. The new members

will do no more than tilt the map of Europe a bit to the north andeast, but that is proving enough to make those on the southern

fringes feel uneasy. They are worried that their concerns will seem

relatively unimportant to the northern majority. In particular, they

fret about North Africa.

With good reason. The Christmas hijacking of an Air France

jet by Islamic extremists served as a grim reminder to the French

that their former colony, Algeria, is fighting a civil war that may well

spill over into France and prompt an exodus of refugees across the

Mediterranean. Like France, Spain and Italy already receive a steady

flow of illegal immigrants from North Africa, where poverty and

fecundity combine to make the adventurous seek a better life in

Europe.

Comment


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Sum up an argument to put it in perspective for your readers.

If there cannot be clear-cut answers to such questions, Chile does

well to worry about them all the same. With an income per head of

$3,700, it is still a relatively poor country. Any slowdown in growthwill risk threatening the political consensus that has been bought

with so much recent suffering.

Prudence and history thus argue in the same direction: for

caution, whether in imposing rigidities on the economy or in growing

government again. Among the lessons the developed world has to

teach Chile is that social spending, once raised, is difficult to reduce

in rich countries; and that laws to increase workers’ rights often have

perverse effects, creating large hidden costs by protecting vested

interests.

Sum up


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Appendix B 99

Another way to make a transition from one paragraph to the next is

to restate the argument from the preceding paragraph.

The best laid plans for the European Union’s single currency may yet

go astray, but at least the blueprint is on the table. On May 31 theEuropean Commission released its ideas for economic and monetary

union (EMU) and proposed a publicity blitz to gain popular support

for a three-phase program: the decision to launch the single currency

and identify the countries qualified to use it; the “irrevocable” fixing,

within a deadline of the following 12 months, of the parities of those

countries’ currencies; and, within a deadline of three years after that,

the transition to the single currency, with its coins and notes

introduced “over a few weeks at the most.”

In other words, read the Maastricht treaty, which gives

starting dates for EMU of 1997 at the earliest and January 1st 1999 at

the latest, add a year and then another three, and by 2003 Europeans

will be emptying their pockets of marks and francs and f illing them

with a new Euro-currency.

Restate


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You can also string examples together—either to extend them or to

contrast them.

But cuts here are political dynamite. Take the government’s planned

cuts in state help to unemployed and poor people with mortgages,on which spending has grown from £31 million in 1979 to £1.1 billion

today. Tony Blair, Labor’s leader, is determined to stop the cuts. So is

Nicholas Winterton, a Tory right-winger keen on cuts in general, who

threatens to lead a rebellion against Mr. Lilley’s plans.

Or take the recent cuts in non-means-tested invalidity

benefits. Many of those claiming the benefits are middle-income

people who had to retire early and were advised by their employers

to top up their pensions with the benefit. And what are many doing

with their newfound leisure? Spending it at Tory coffee mornings,

that’s what. Mr Lilley has warned colleagues that opposition to cuts

in invalidity payments has yet to peak.

String examples together


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As we saw in the first section of the workbook, the purpose of

most paragraphs is to make a point and support that point

effectively. But not all paragraphs make a point. Some introduce or

conclude an argument. Some signal a shift to a new set of ideas.

And some continue to elaborate on a previous paragraph. Examplesof each of these three kinds of “pointless” paragraphs appear on

the next few pages.

So, there are exceptions to the point-per-paragraph standard.

Sparing use of introductory, swing, or continuing paragraphs can

support your other paragraphs more effectively and give variety to

your writing.

When to start a new paragraph? There are no rules, but keep these

things in mind:

A new paragraph usually signals a new point, with some exceptions

as discussed above.

Paragraphs that run too long will tax your readers’ attention and

patience.

Trust your instincts. Most people have an innate sense of where a

logical break would occur.

Appendix C Other kinds of paragraphs


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How to Write Powerful Paragraphs Appendix C 103

Strong closing paragraphs often convey the essence of an

argument’s main points without restating all of its detail. The

strongest closing paragraphs put the main points in perspective

and provoke thought.

Here is a typical closing paragraph:

It has been demonstrated in this report that France wants to use its

six-month presidency of the EU to protect the French language.

France’s proposal is to have every secondary school pupil in theUnion learn two foreign languages. England is on the other side of

the debate. A careful study of both sides of the issue has led to this

conclusion: the biggest beneficiary is likely to be the French. This is

doubtless a good thing in its own right, however much it panders to

French patriotism.

Here is a more memorable closing paragraph:

So France is in fact the biggest beneficiary in this debate. This is

doubtless a good thing in its own right, however much it panders to

French patriotism. But try telling that to the English.

In the second paragraph, the details have been suppressed, and the

comment at the end makes the close more memorable.


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104

Swing paragraphs signal a transition from one point to another.

This paragraph sums up previous paragraphs and then poses a

question that leads into the

powerful paragraphs wkbk

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