What’s so interesting about a paragraph?, you might say. Ah yes, the humble paragraph… but what more is it other than a combination of sentences that convey some form of idea unit? If you ask me, it’s this description that makes it so interesting, particularly from a cognitive psychology perspective.

Some dictionaries define a paragraph in terms of containing one or more sentences (e.g., Cambridge, Collins, and Merriam-Webster). Such conceptualisation is problematic because a single sentence is not a paragraph; it’s just a sentence. I advise my students never to present a paragraph as such because these "floating sentences" fail to achieve some of the lesser-discussed goals of well-written paragraphs (e.g., in addition to providing a representation of an idea, some form of elaboration is typically justified and sufficient clarity is needed to create a logical thread to segue one "idea unit" to the next). With that, there is a caveat. In creative writing, some will use a single sentence as such and do so well. Indeed, some of the most interesting "idea units" I’ve ever read pertain to just one sentence (e.g., one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve ever read is told through a six-word sentence fragment: For sale: Baby shoes, never worn).

However, in academic writing, where clarity and logic are of utmost importance, a single sentence will not do. A more accurate description of a paragraph might be that which comes from the Oxford Dictionary, which describes a paragraph as consisting of "several sentences." But what is "several"?

I used to present an academic writing boot camp, where I would take one group for half a day, and a colleague would take another group, and we........

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