Paragraph Defined

Paragraph is a group of sentences usually two or more, which tries to communicate at least one main idea but perhaps more through a certain pattern, order, or framework. It has unifying central idea or a topic idea, an organizing pattern that develops that idea with concentrate details, connecting words that interrelate ideas, and a final sentence that brings the paragraph to a cleared end. However, unlike the composition, the paragraph does this in a single unit, which indented only once. The most common paragraph pattern is a movement from a general organizing concept to more specific development details.

The "grammar" of paragraph in English may be quite different from the "grammar" of paragraph in your first language. In fact, to some extent, probably every language uses patterns of ideas somewhat differently. In some languages, of course the paragraph as it is known in English doesn't even exist, although most languages seem to have some way of indicating a single unit of thought. Sometimes the difference between languages is slight, sometimes great, but the contrast is enough to cause trouble for writers accustomed to thinking in one pattern who now have to write another. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to bridge these differences by paying attention to the pattern to be mastered in the target language. In papers written in English for English speakers, the key ideas must be developed in well-defined paragraph patterns (Andrew Macdonald and Gina Macdonald, Mastering Writing Essentials, 1996:71)

How long should a paragraph be? As long as it takes to serve its funtions. An introductury or concluding paragraph may be only  a sentence or two long while a body paragraph trying to communicate a complex idea or explore a complicated relationshipmay take a full page. In other wors, degree of development depends on purpose. The amount of development should be enough to cover the expectations created in the topic sentence.

Here is the example of paragraph

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