Chapter XIV: The Paragraph

The sentences developing each of the divisions of a composition make one _paragraph_. A paragraph, therefore, is the treatment of one of the natural divisions of a subject. The length depends on the topic to be treated. Two cautions may be given:

1. Do not write paragraphs containing only one sentence. Such paragraphs do not represent divisions of the subject. They are simply statements which have not been expanded as they deserve, or they are sentences that should be placed with the preceding or succeeding sentences in order to make a good paragraph. Some business men in their letters and advertisements use the one-sentence paragraph too frequently to concentrate the attention of the reader. A writer divides his composition into paragraphs in order to aid the reader to follow the thoughts he is presenting. When the reader sees the indentation that indicates a new paragraph, he thinks that the writer has said all that he intends to say on the topic in hand and now intends to open a new topic. It is confusing to find that the new paragraph is simply another sentence on the same topic as the preceding paragraph. Notice the jerky effect of the following extract from a letter:

We are sending you a copy of our latest catalogue,
which gives illustrations and prices of all our stock.

The illustrations are all made from actual photographs
and are faithful in representing the shoe described.

Bear Brand Shoes are shipped in special fiber cases,
thus lessening freight bills and eliminating the
annoyance of shortage claims because they cannot be
opened without immediate detection.

Errors of any kind should be reported without delay.

Imperfect or damaged goods must be returned for our
inspection; otherwise no allowance will be made.

2. Do not go to the other extreme, writing paragraphs of great length. Much depends, of course, on the matter to be treated, but, as a rule, in a student's theme a paragraph should be not longer than one page. If one of the divisions of your subject is necessarily long, subdivide it, allowing a paragraph to treat each of the subdivisions.

Whether it is to be long or short, a paragraph must treat but one topic; from the first sentence to the last, it should be the development of one idea. Moreover, this topic must be revealed to the reader in no unmistakable way. Sometimes the subject is so simple that the topic may easily be gathered from the details given, but usually it is well to have one sentence that in a brief or general way states the topic. This is called the _topic sentence_. It may be at or near the beginning; in this case the rest of the paragraph defines or illustrates what it states. It may, however, be found at almost any point in the paragraph, not infrequently acting as a sentence of conclusion, summing up the details that have been presented.

A paragraph that begins with a topic sentence sometimes ends with a sentence of conclusion. The first sentence states the topic, the following sentences explain or illustrate it, and the last sentence summarizes or otherwise indicates that the topic has been completed. This form has been called the _hammock_ paragraph, because it has a solid "post" at each end with a mass of details "swinging" between. It is a good form to use in writing paragraphs on given subjects, when each paragraph is to stand alone, complete in itself, not forming part of a longer composition. The practice of writing such paragraphs induces clear, forceful thinking.

=Exercise 208=

Study the following paragraphs for--

1. Topic sentence, if there is one.
2. Development of the topic.
3. Sentence of conclusion, if there is one.

1

The problem in many large firms is how to develop
office efficiency to the highest possible degree. In
this respect the monthly examination scheme has been
found a great success. The examination consists of a
list of questions about merchandise and business
procedure. The questions are given out on the last
Saturday of the month, and the answers are returned
for criticism on the following Wednesday. The
employees are told that they may consult as many
authorities as they wish, but each man must write his
own paper. A poor percentage in three of these tests
usually means dismissal. Thus the inefficient are
dropped, and the ambitious who have studied are
recognized. The vice-president of one concern that
uses this system says that it is a strong reminder to
his men that they must make themselves worthy of the
organization. Besides maintaining an even standard of
efficiency, the plan has resulted in developing a
number of valuable executives, whose latent powers
were brought out by the rigidness of the tests.

2

Every month the department head in one big eastern
concern, watch in hand, times a large force of typists
individually, testing how rapidly they can write a
letter of 200 words from their shorthand notes.
Rapidity, punctuation, spelling, and neatness are
carefully recorded. This plan has had a desirable
influence in bringing stenographers up to grade in
their daily work, because a good examination mark is
reduced one-half by careless daily work, and a poor
examination mark correspondingly raised by excellent
daily work. When both examination average and daily
average are excellent, the stenographer's salary is
increased; when both are below good, the stenographer
is dismissed. In this way the standard of stenographic
work is kept high.

3

In his effort to succeed many a young business man
overlooks the detail of business courtesy. He does not
realize the value that a buyer places upon that
commodity. The more experienced man, however, knows
that courtesy does more to hold a buyer than do
bargain sales. In our large cities merchants have
incurred great expense to fit up rest rooms where
customers may spend an idle hour, write letters on
stationery that is provided, and read the latest
magazines. In the rural districts, where such luxuries
are often impossible, the merchant provides chairs for
his customers and a place for stationing their teams.
The country merchant, however, can often accomplish
his object more quickly than the city dealer by
spending an hour gossiping with his customers. He
recognizes the fact that buyers are flattered when the
proprietor himself takes the time to say a few words
to them. He knows just as well as his city competitor
does, that if a buyer feels at home in his store,
sales are practically guaranteed.

4

The rural landscape of Norway, on the long easterly
slope that leads up to the watershed among the
mountains on the western coast, is not unlike that of
Vermont or New Hampshire. The railway from Christiania
to the Randsfjord carried us through a hilly country
of scattered farms and villages. Wood played a
prominent part in the scenery. There were dark
stretches of forest on the hilltops and in the
valleys; rivers filled with floating logs; sawmills
beside the waterfalls; wooden farmhouses painted
white; and rail-fences around the fields. The people
seemed sturdy, prosperous, independent. They had the
familiar habit of coming down to the station to see
the train arrive and depart. We might have fancied
ourselves on a journey through the Connecticut valley
if it had not been for the soft sing-song of the
Norwegian speech and the uniform politeness of the
railway officials.

--Van Dyke: _Fisherman's Luck._

5

The plan of the _Spectator_ must be allowed to be both
original and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in
the series may be read with pleasure separately; yet
the five or six hundred essays form a whole, and a
whole which has the interest of a novel. It must be
remembered, too, that at that time no novel, giving a
lively and powerful picture of the common life and
manners of England, had appeared. Richardson was
working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds'
nests. Smollett was not yet born. The narrative,
therefore, which connects together the Spectator's
essays gave to our ancestors their first taste of an
exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative was,
indeed, constructed with no art or labor. The events
were such events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes
up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet
always calls Prince Eugene, goes with the Spectator on
the water to Spring Gardens, walks among the tombs in
the Abbey, and is frightened by the Mohawks, but
conquers his apprehension so far as to go to the
theater when the "Distressed Mother" is acted. The
Spectator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley Hall,
is charmed with the old house, the old butler, and the
old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, rides
to the assizes, and hears a point of law discussed by
Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the honest butler
brings to the club the news that Sir Roger is dead.
Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The club
breaks up, and the Spectator resigns his functions.
Such events can hardly be said to form a plot; yet
they are related with such truth, such grace, such
wit, such humor, such pathos, such knowledge of the
human heart, such knowledge of the ways of the world
that they charm us on the hundredth perusal. We have
not the least doubt that if Addison had written a
novel on an extensive plan, it would have been
superior to any that we possess. As it is, he is
entitled to be considered not only as the greatest of
the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the
great English novelists.

--Macaulay: _Essay on Addison._

=Exercise 209=

Prepare a paragraph developing each of the following topic sentences:

1. The kitchen was a cheerful place. (Tell all the
details that will explain the word _cheerful_.)

2. In the kitchen the preparations for the feast went
on merrily. (Give the details that will help one get
the picture.)

3. Examinations are helpful to the student. (In what
ways are they helpful? If possible, use examples to
illustrate the point.)

4. Winter is more enjoyable than summer. (Contrast the
pleasures of the one with those of the other, showing
that those of winter are more enjoyable.)

5. Riding a motorcycle is apt to make a boy reckless.
(Develop by using examples.)

6. A man must like his work if he is to succeed in it.

7. Farm lands vary in price.

8. The farmer feeds the world.

9. Every department store should have regular fire
drills.

10. Every sale ought to be an advertisement.

=Exercise 210=

Paragraph the following so that the paragraphs will represent the divisions in thought. If there are any topic sentences, underline them.

1

I have often noticed that every one has his own
individual small economies, careful habits of saving
fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction,
any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending
shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old
gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the
intelligence of the failure of a Joint Stock Bank, in
which some of his money was invested, with a stoical
mildness, worried his family all through a long
summer's day because one of them had torn (instead of
cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless
bankbook. Of course, the corresponding pages at the
other end came out as well, and this little
unnecessary waste of paper (his private economy)
chafed him more than all the loss of his money.
Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they came in.
The only way in which he could reconcile himself to
such a waste of his cherished article was by patiently
turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so
making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by
age, I see him casting wistful glances at his
daughters when they send a whole inside of a
half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of
acceptance to an invitation written on only one of the
sides. I am not above owning that I have this human
weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get
full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted
together, ready for uses that never come. I am
seriously annoyed if any one cuts a string of a parcel
instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by
fold. How people can bring themselves to use
India-rubber bands, which are a sort of deification of
string, as lightly as they do I cannot imagine. To me
an India-rubber band is a precious treasure. I have
one which is not new--one that I picked up off the
floor nearly five years ago. I have really tried to
use it, but my heart failed me, and I could not commit
the extravagance. Small pieces of butter grieve
others. They cannot attend to conversation because of
the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some
people have of invariably taking more butter than they
want. Have you ever seen the anxious look (almost
mesmeric) which such persons fix on the article? They
would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of
their sight by popping it into their own mouths and
swallowing it down; and they are really made happy if
the person on whose plate it lies unused suddenly
breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at
all) and eats up his butter. They think that this is
not waste. Now, Miss Matty Jenkins was chary of
candles: We had many devices to use as few as
possible. In the winter afternoons she would sit
knitting for two or three hours--she could do this in
the dark or by firelight--and when I asked if I might
not ring for candles to finish stitching my
wristbands, she told me to "keep blind man's holiday."
They were usually brought in with tea, but we burnt
only one at a time. As we lived in constant
preparation for a friend who might come in any evening
(but who never did), it required some contrivance to
keep our two candles of the same length, ready to be
lighted, and to look as if we burnt two always. The
candles took it in turns; and then, whatever we might
be talking of or doing, Miss Matty kept her eyes
habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to jump up and
extinguish it and light the other before they had
become too uneven in length to be restored to equality
in the course of the evening.

--Adapted from Mrs. Gaskell's _Cranford_.

2

Dear Madam:

We are sorry to say that we have no more house coats
No. SP62 in size 38 at $4.50. As we advertised, SP62
is not a regular stock number, but represents a
collection of $5, $6, and $7.50 coats remaining after
the holiday sales and reduced to insure their being
sold before spring. At the opening of the sale there
were only a few coats in size 38, and they were sold
almost at once. In our catalogue, pages 68 to 71
inclusive, you will find descriptions of all our stock
house coats. On page 68 you will see No. 450HC, our
regular $4.50 coat. If you would like us to send you
one of these in size 38, we shall forward it to you at
once. However, if you would like a $5, $6, or $7.50
coat, you will, no doubt, send us the difference in
price on receipt of this letter. Of course, the more
expensive garments are made of better materials, but
all our coats show the same excellent workmanship. The
best way for you to get the exact shade of trimming
that you wish is to send us a sample of the goods that
you would like to match. We assure you that we shall
take all possible care to send you the proper color.

Yours truly,

=Exercise 211=

Paragraphs may be developed in different ways. For example, if you were going to write on the process of making a layer cake, you would explain in detail the different ingredients in the mixture, the proportion of each, and the steps in the process before the product could be sold as a layer cake.

By the use of explanatory details develop the following:

1. Making a kite.
2. Making a baseball.
3. Making fudge.
4. How to play checkers.
5. The manufacture of soap (or any article in a grocery).
6. The manufacture of a tin can.
7. The manufacture of pins.
8. Every man must have an ambition.
9. Why I intend to enter business.
10. The greatest modern invention.

By the use of examples to illustrate your point develop the following:

1. Electricity is making housework easy and pleasant.
2. Many sons of poor parents have won great wealth.
3. The wireless apparatus has saved many lives.
4. A boy can show that he is a good citizen.
5. Young Americans have little respect for authority.

By the use of comparison and contrast develop the following:

1. Improvements in modern lighting systems.
2. Improvements in modern heating systems.
3. Improvements in modern means of locomotion.
4. Two kinds of work, pleasure, or study.
5. Why I intend to have a business of my own.
6. The study that I like best.

By explaining cause and effect develop the following:

1. The advantages of public gymnasiums.
2. The success of loose leaf devices.
3. The objections to football.

=Exercise 212=

Develop the following into paragraphs; in each case be able to show what method or methods you have employed:

1. A man who cannot read and write English should not
be allowed to vote.

2. Postal savings banks inspire the savings habit.

3. Women--the mothers of children--should vote.

4. Women should not vote because they do not read the
newspaper.

5. The effect of school slang is bad.

6. I wish I had seen the coronation of George V. Every
fairy story I had ever read would suddenly have become
real.

7. Canada would gain by reciprocity with the United
States.

8. The United States would gain by reciprocity with
Canada.

9. Our forests should be preserved.

10. The waste of lumber by forest fires results from
carelessness.

11. The waste of lumber in cutting railroad ties is
too great.

12. The rotation of crops enriches the soil.

13. Apples are more easily gathered than cherries.

14. Efforts should be made to keep the birds in our
city parks.

15. Every boy should learn a trade.

16. Peddlers should not be allowed to call their
wares.

17. Great crowds gathered in the city during aviation
week (or any celebration).

18. The electric toaster is good for hurry-up
breakfasts.

19. Ironing with an electric iron is more convenient
than with the old-fashioned kind.

20. The wireless apparatus makes sea voyages safer
than before.

21. A mixed diet is best.

22. Cats should be exterminated because they spread
disease.

23. The parcel post will decrease the profits of the
express companies.

24. A good book is opened with expectation and closed
with profit.

25. Merchants should charge for delivering purchases.

26. The object of the Child Welfare Exhibit is to
promote the best interests of children.

27. One of the best enactments of our time is the
Child Labor Law.

=Exercise 213--Smooth Connection=

We may as well confess at the beginning that smooth connection between sentences and paragraphs is a hard thing to learn. Primarily, it depends on clear thinking. In Exercise 135 we saw that the idea of one sentence must grow out of the idea of the preceding one. It is the same with paragraphs. The thought must develop gradually from one to the next. Each paragraph, we know, represents a unit within the larger unit of the composition; each represents a division of thought. Not infrequently the thought of one division differs considerably from the thought of the next. The tying together of such units is sometimes hard. It may be done in one of the following ways:

1. By repeating at the beginning of the new paragraph or sentence part of the preceding paragraph or sentence.

2. By using pronouns to refer to what has gone before.

3. By using connecting links, sometimes called _transition words_ because they indicate the transition from one division to the next. Besides those mentioned in Exercise 135, we may use a numeral connection, as, _in the first place_, _in the second place_; or an expression much like a numeral, as, _furthermore_, _in the next place_; or an expression showing that an adverse idea is to be presented, as, _on the other hand_, _however_, _in spite of this_, _nevertheless_. But whatever you do, choose the right link, especially if you use such a one as _possibly_, _probably_, _perhaps_, _certainly_, _surely_. Use the one that expresses your idea exactly. Have none rather than the wrong one.

In the following the first and second paragraphs are connected according to (1) above; the second and third are connected according to (3) above.

There comes to every prosperous man a time when he
wishes to know the best way of securing a steady
income from his accumulated savings without the burden
of responsibility of managing some property in order
to gain his income. The merchant may not wish to put
back into the business all the earnings he gets from
it, and yet he wishes to prepare for his old age. The
farmer may wish to give up active work, but he
realizes how soon his broad acres may deteriorate
through soil-robbery when he rents his property "on
shares." With such a problem before him the thoughtful
man makes an effort to _learn_ how to act to secure a
good _income_ all his life.

One of the first things he _learns_, if he studies the
situation carefully, is that there is a wide
difference between an _income_ derived from one's
business ability, such as the profit secured from
running a store, factory, jobbing house, or farm, and
the income which is derived as the result of money
"working" by itself. In the first case, a man must of
necessity keep up his business responsibilities; in
the other, once he has selected a safe investment,
practically all he has to do is to collect his income
from time to time as it falls due. There is in the
latter no depreciation of land, buildings, machinery,
or the like; no insurance payments to worry about; no
crop failures to consider.

_It is evident, then_, that if one wishes to put
surplus money away--say the proceeds from the sale of
a business or a farm--and get a steady income from it
without bother or worry, the most important thing to
consider is how to go about it to select something
which, once purchased, will turn out to be a safe
investment.

=Exercise 214=

In the following paragraphs taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's _The Philosophy of Nomenclature_, point out all the transition words that join (1) sentence to sentence, and (2) paragraph to paragraph:

To begin, then: the influence of our name makes itself
felt from the very cradle. As a schoolboy I remember
the pride with which I hailed Robin Hood, Robert
Bruce, and Robert le Diable as my name-fellows; and
the feeling of sore disappointment that fell on my
heart when I found a freebooter or a general who did
not share with me a single one of my numerous
_praenomina_. Look at the delight with which two
children find they have the same name. They are
friends from that moment forth; they have a bond of
union stronger than exchange of nuts and sweetmeats.
This feeling, I own, wears off in later life. Our
names lose their freshness and interest, become trite
and indifferent. But this, dear reader, is merely one
of the sad effects of those "shades of the prison
house" which come gradually betwixt us and nature with
advancing years; it affords no weapon against the
philosophy of names.

In after life, although we fail to trace its working,
that name which careless godfathers lightly applied to
your unconscious infancy will have been moulding your
character and influencing with irresistible power the
whole course of your earthly fortunes. But the last
name is no whit less important as a condition of
success. Family names, we must recollect, are but
inherited nicknames; and if the _sobriquet_ were
applicable to the ancestor, it is most likely
applicable to the descendant also. You would not
expect to find Mr. M'Phun acting as a mute or Mr.
M'Lumpha excelling as a professor of dancing.
Therefore, in what follows, we shall consider names,
independent of whether they are first or last. And to
begin with, look what a pull _Cromwell_ had over
_Pym_--the one name full of a resonant imperialism,
the other mean, pettifogging, and unheroic to a
degree. Who would expect eloquence from _Pym_--who
would read poems by _Pym_--who would bow to the
opinions of _Pym_? He might have been a dentist, but
he should never have aspired to be a statesman. I can
only wonder that he succeeded as he did. Pym and
Habakkuk stand first upon the roll of men who have
triumphed, by sheer force of genius, over the most
unfavorable appellations. But even these have
suffered; and, had they been more fitly named, the one
might have been Lord Protector and the other have
shared the laurels with Isaiah. In this matter we must
not forget that all our great poets have borne great
names. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope,
Wordsworth, Shelley--what a constellation of lordly
words! Not a single commonplace name among them--not a
Brown, not a Jones, not a Robinson; they are all names
that one would stop and look at on a door-plate. Now,
imagine if _Pepys_ had tried to clamber somehow into
the enclosure of poetry, what a blot would that name
have made upon the list! The thing is impossible. In
the first place, a certain natural consciousness that
men have would have held him down to the level of his
name, would have prevented him from rising above the
Pepsine standard, and so haply withheld him altogether
from attempting verse. Next, the booksellers would
refuse to publish, and the world to read them, on the
mere evidence of the fatal appellation. And now,
before I close this section, I must say one word as to
_punnable_ names, names that stand alone, that have a
significance and life apart from him that bears them.
These are the bitterest of all. One friend of mine
goes bowed and humbled through life under the weight
of this misfortune; for it is an awful thing when a
man's name is a joke, when he cannot be mentioned
without exciting merriment, and when even the
intimation of his death bids fair to carry laughter
into many a home.

So much for people who are badly named. Now for people
who are _too_ well named, who go topheavy from the
font, who are baptized into a false position, and who
find themselves beginning life eclipsed under the fame
of some of the great ones of the past. A man, for
instance, called William Shakespeare could never dare
to write plays. He is thrown into too humbling an
apposition with the author of _Hamlet_. His own name
coming after is such an anti-climax. "The plays of
William Shakespeare?" says the reader--"O no! The
plays of William Shakespeare Cockerill," and he throws
the book aside. In wise pursuance of such views, Mr.
John Milton Hengler, who not long since delighted us
in this favored town, has never attempted to write an
epic, but has chosen a new path and has excelled upon
the tight-rope. A marked example of triumph over this
is the case of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rosetti. On the face
of the matter, I should have advised him to imitate
the pleasing modesty of the last-named gentleman, and
confine his ambition to the sawdust. But Mr. Rosetti
has triumphed. He has even dared to translate from his
mighty name-father; and the voice of fame supports him
in his boldness.

=Exercise 215=

Turn back to Exercise 210, 1. How are the different paragraphs that you have made connected?