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72     4a     Writing and revising paragraphs
Instructor's Annotated Edition
TRANSPARENCY MASTER 4.1
COMPUTER ACTIVITY
Have students print out Web pages and bring them into class. Individually or as a class, they can evaluate the paragraphs for unity, coherence, and development. Students can make suggestions for how to revise each page's paragraphs and lor where to position links to other pages.
Checklist for revising paragraphs
■ Is the paragraph unified? Does it adhere to one general idea that is either stated in a topic sentence or otherwise apparent? (See below.)
■ Is the paragraph coherent? Do the sentences follow a clear sequence? Are the sentences linked as needed by parallelism, repetition or restatement, pronouns, consistency, and transitional expressions? (See p. 77.)
■ Is the paragraph developed? Is the general idea of the paragraph well supported with specific evidence such as details, facts, examples, and reasons? (See p. 90.)
RESOURCES AND IDEAS
Rhetorical scholarship is split on a number of the "givens" of paragraphing: whether paragraphs are self-contained units or building blocks of larger discourses, whether topic sentences are needed, and so on. These references offer you a lairh mainstream view of research into paragraphing.
Knoblauch, C. H. "The Rhetoric of the Paragraph," Journal of Advanced Composition 2 (1981): 53-61.
Stern, Arthur A. "When Is a Paragraph?*' College Composition and Communication 27 (1976): 253-57. Stern argues for the rhetorical flexibility of paragraphs as development devices.
for ihe Web, you may want to write shorter paragraphs than you would in printed documents, and save embedded links for the ends of paragraphs lest readers miss important information. (For more on composing for the Web, see pp. 832-38.)
^iSKguace^ Not all cultures share the paragraphing conventions of American academic writing. The conventions are not universal even among users of standard American English: for instance, US newspaper writers compose very short paragraphs that will break up text in narrow columns. In some other languages, writing moves differently from English—not from left to right, but from right to left or down rows from top to bottom. Even in languages that move as English does, writers may nol use paragraphs at all. Or they may use paragraphs but not state the central ideas or provide transitional expressions to show readers how sentences relate. If your native language is not English and you have difficulty with paragraphs, don't worry about paragraphing during drafting. Instead, during a separate step of revision, divide your text into parts that develop your main points. Mark those parts with indentions.
HIGHLIGHTS
Section 4a of this chapter addresses the need for a paragraph to focus on a topic and to make the focus clear to the reader through an explicit statement in the form of a topic sentence. It introduces the basic form of the expository paragraph—topic sentence, illustrations, and details —and indicates how rhis pattern can be varied to suit a writer's purpose and to lit within the context created by the surrounding paragraphs.
The concept of a clearly stated and variously placed topic sentence that controls the shape of a paragraph is an oversimplificulion. But it ap-
4a    Maintaining paragraph unity
Readers generally expect a paragraph to explore a single idea. They will be alert for that idea and will patiently follow its development. In other words, they will seek and appreciate paragraph unity: clear identification and clear elaboration of one idea and of that idea only.
In ait essay the thesis statement often asserts the main idea as a commitment to readers (see p. 27). In a paragraph a topic sentence often alerts readers to the essence of the paragraph by asserting the central idea and expressing Ihe writer's attitude toward it. In a brief essay each body paragraph will likely treat one main point support-
Instructor's Annotated Edition
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Paragraph unity    4a 73
ing the essay's thesis statement; the lopie sentences simply elaborate on parts ol ihe thesis. In longer essays paragraphs tend to work in groups, each group treating one main point. Then the topic sentences will tie into that main point, and all the points together will support the thesis.
1   Focusing on the central idea
Like the thesis sentence, the topic sentence is a commitment to readers, and the rest of the paragraph delivers on that commitment. Look again at Kuralt's paragraph on chili on page 71: the opening statement conveys the author's promise that he will describe various ways to make chili, and the following sentences keep the promise. But what if Kuralt had written this paragraph instead?
Some people really like chili, apparently, but nobody can agree how the stuff should be made. C. V. Wood, twice winner at Terlingua, uses flank steak, pork chops, chicken, and green chilis. My friend Hughes Rudd, who imported five hundred pounds of chili powder into Russia as a condition of accepting employment as Moscow correspondent, favors coarse-ground beef. He had some trouble finding the beef in Moscow, though. He sometimes had to scour all the markets and wait in long lines. For any American used to overstocked supermarkets and department stores, Russia can be quite a shock.
Topic sentence: general statement
Two examples supporting statement
Digression
By wandering off from chili ingredients to consumer deprivation in Russia, the paragraph fails to deliver on the commitment of its topic sentence.
You should expect digressions while you are drafting: if you allow yourself to explore ideas, as you should, then of course every paragraph will not be tightly woven, perfectly unified. But spare your readers the challenge and frustration of repeatedly shifting focus to follow your rough explorations: revise each paragraph so ihal it develops a single idea.
While revising your paragraphs for unity, you may want to highlight the central idea of each paragraph to be sure it's slated and then focus on it. On paper you can bracket or circle the idea. On a computer you can formal the idea in color or highlight it with a color background. Just be sure to remove the color or highlighting before printing the final draft.
pears to help students a great deal to think of the paragraph as a unit dominated and controlled by an expressly stated generalization. Students can see the topic sentence as a commitment I hey make to the reader, with the rest of the paragraph following through on the commitment. Seeing the obvious parallel between the paragraph's topic sentence and the essay's thesis statement is also helpful to many students. Finally, slating a central point in a single sentence and marshaling support lor it enables students to see more clearly what is required for unity.
The exercises for this section ask students to identify the central idea in unified paragraphs, to revise paragraphs, to build a paragraph by combining and revising kernel sentences, and to write their own paragraphs. These exercises can be easily adapted to small-group work: in coming to understand how others view paragraphs, students may more readily understand the influence of paragraph structure and unity on readers.
2  Placing the topic sentence
The topic sentence of a paragraph and its supporting details may be arranged variously, depending on how you want to direct
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74     4a    Writing and revising paragraphs
Instructor's Annotated Edition
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
USING STUDENT WRITING
Ask students to choose key paragraphs [torn their work-in-progress and read them aloud to iheir groups. The listeners should take notes on the effectiveness of Lhe various unity strategies they hear in each paragraph. If students have trouble responding without seeing a written text, you can have them work in pairs to critique and revise the unity of each other's paragraphs.
COLORING PARAGRAPHS
Bring in copies of sample paragraphs and felt-tipped pens or pencils in two colors. Split the class into groups and ask each group to underline topic sentences in one color and examples and details in another color. Students should then be able to discover the arrangement of each paragraph, the placement of the topic sentence, and the way the parts fit together to form a unified whole. Students working in a computer classroom can use the Bold feature and designated fonts instead of pens to identify each of these elements.
USING STUDENT WRITING
Ask students to bring in paragraphs from writings in other classes or other disciplines to use in the "coloring paragraphs" activity. They will find it instructive to note how different writers decide to place, emphasize, or omit topic sentences. They can also perform this exercise on the paragraphs in their drafts.
SEEING PARAGRAPHS
Visually, students may find it easier to understand topic sentence placement and paragraph arrangement by using these diagrams as guides:
Topic sentence at the beginning: A
Topic sentence at the A
beginning and in the middle: A
Topic sentence at the end: V Topic sentence at the
beginning and the end: 0
TOPIC SENTENCE OMISSION
Some research suggests that the necessity of a topic sentence is determined by the author's illation
readers' attention and how complex your central idea is. In the most common arrangements, the topic sentence comes at the beginning of the paragraph, comes at the end, or is not stated at all but is nonetheless apparent. The advantages of each approach are described on these two pages. If you write on a computer, you can easily experiment with lite position of the topic sentence by moving the sentence around (or deleting it) to see the effect. (The sentence will probably take some editing to work smoothly into various positions.)
■ Topic sentence at the beginning
When the topic sentence appears first in a paragraph, it can help you select the details that follow. For readers, lhe topic-first model establishes an initial context in which all the supporting details can be understood. Reading Kuralt's paragraph on page 71, we easily relate each detail or example back to the point made in the first sentence.
The topic-first model is common not only in expository paragraphs, such as Kuralt's, but also in argument paragraphs, such as the one following:
It is a misunderstanding of the American retail store to think we go there necessarily to buy. Some of us shop. There's a difference. Shopping has many purposes, the least interesting of which is to acquire new articles. We shop to cheer ourselves up. We shop to practice decision-making. We shop to be useful and productive members of our class and society. We shop to remind ourselves how much is available to us. We shop to remind ourselves how much is to be striven for. We shop to assert our superiority to the material objects that spread themselves before us.
—Phyllis Rose, "Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures"
Topic sentence: statement of misconception
Correction of misconception
■ Topic sentence at the end
In some paragraphs the central idea may be stated at the end, after supporting sentences have made a case for the general statement. Since this model leads the reader to a conclusion by presenting all the evidence first, it can prove effective in argument. And because the point of the paragraph is withheld until the end, this model can be dramatic in exposition, too, as illustrated by the following example from an essay about William Tecurrtseh Sherman, a Union general during the US Civil War:
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Paragraph unity     4a 7s
Sherman is considered by some to be the inventor of "total war": the first general in human history to carry the logic of war to its ultimate extreme, the first to scorch the earth, the first to consciously demoralize the hostile civilian population in order to subdue its army, the first to wreck an economy in order to starve its soldiers. He has been called our first "merchant of terror" and seen as the spiritual father of our Vietnam War concepts of "search and destroy/' "pacification," "strategic hamlets," and "free-fire zones." As such, he remains a cardboard figure of our history: a monstrous arch-villain to unreconstructed Southerners, and an embarrassment to Northerners.
—Adapted from James Reston, Jr., "You Cannot Refine It"
Expressing the central idea at the end of the paragraph does not eliminate the need to unify the paragraph. The idea in the topic sentence must still govern the selection of all the preceding details.
■ Central idea not stated
Occasionally, a paragraph's central idea will be stated in the previous paragraph or will be so obvious that it need not be stated at all, The following is from an essay on the actor Humphrey Bogart:
Usually he wore the trench coat unbuttoned, just tied with the belt, and a slouch hat, rarely tilted. Sometimes it was a captain's cap and a yachting jacket. Almost always his trousers were held up by a cowboy belt. You know the kind: one an Easterner waiting for a plane out of Phoenix buys just as a joke and then takes a liking to. Occasionally, he'd hitch up his slacks with it, and he often jabbed his thumbs behind it, his hands ready for a fight or a dame.
—Peter Bogdanovich, "Bogie in Excelsis"
Paragraphs in descriptive writing (like the one above) and in narrative writing (relating a sequence of events) often lack stated topic sentences. But a paragraph without a topic sentence still should have a central idea, and its details should develop that idea.
EXERCISE 4.1   Finding the central idea
What is the central idea of each of the following paragraphs? In what sentence or sentences is it expressed? (You can do this exercise online at ablongman.com/iittlebrown,)
Information supporting and building to topic sentence
— Topic sentence
Details adding up to the unstated idea that Bogart's character could be seen in bis clothing
to his or her readers; a writer writing to less expert or more expert readers is more likely to use a topic sentence than one writing for peers, for instance. Ask students to work in groups to colled examples of topic sentence use and omission, then analyze the different author-reader relationships implied in each example. Encourage students lo collect samples from their own journals and papers, but also from various kinds of published writing, to get the best results trom this survey.
COMPUTER ACTIVITY
REORGANIZING PARAGRAPHS
For students working on computers, the reorganization of paragraphs is particularly easy. Encourage students to select one or two paragraphs from their drafts and reorganize them with the controlling idea at the end, as Reston does. Then ask them to judge whether they gain any rhetorical advantage from such a rearrangement. Leonard A. Podis suggests some oilier exercises of this nature in "Teaching Arrangement: Defining a More Practical Approach," College Composition and Communication 31 (1980); 197-204, and JoAnne M. Podis and Leonard A. Podis present more exercises in "Identifying and Teaching Rhetorical Plans For Arrangement," Cottage Composition anil Communication 41 (19y0): 430-42.
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
Ask students to work in groups to complete Exercise 4.1. Ask each group to discuss what effect the particular placement of each topic sentence has, and then report back to the class on the sentences that best express the central idea ol each paragraph.