THE CEA FORUM - Winter/Spring 2011 - Shooting Straight about Paragraphs: They Are Not What We Say They Are

Oct 15, 2026

“Shooting Straight about Paragraphs: They Are Not What We Say They Are” examines how the conventional definition of a paragraph as “three to five sentences” arose and how it persists in composition teaching. Drawing on historical meanings of “paragraph,” it contrasts mainstream printerly origins with later rhetorical and psychological framing, using earlier scholarship such as Helen Thomas’s method and examples from Franklin. The discussion argues for rethinking what paragraphs do across genres.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time17 min

AccessFree to download

Shooting Straight about Paragraphs: They Are Not What We Say They Are

Conventional Definitions and Student Responses

Etymology and Historical Meanings of “Paragraph”

Scientific/Academic Paradigms in Composition

Helen Thomas’s Rhetorical and Psychological Framework

A Geometry-Proposition Method and an Example from Franklin

THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2011 Shooting Straight about Paragraphs: They Are Not What We Say They Are JEFFREY DeLOTTO Texas Wesleyan University Ask any class,“What’s a paragraph?”After a few moments, repeat the question, reassuring the students that this is not a trick question. The vast majority of students will look at you and see English teacher, scan their memory banks, and dutifully respond with the litany of “three to five sentences, develops a single topic or thought, supports a thesis”; some might think to add,“has unity and cohesion,” or some such. But I just will not accept that response any longer, eventhough we have taught the criteria like scripture for years. Find an example of that, without looking it up in your comp handbook, I ask my students. But perhaps we should take a look at this convention, see where it came from, and move forward in time to the paragraph’s present utilization, in various print and electronic media. I propose that we think about what a paragraph is by considering its function, what it does in a piece of writing, whether in a popular novel, a newspaper article, an e-mail, a business report, or a lofty piece of literary criticism. We might think about a paragraph as a rhetorical dwelling. The first occurrence of the term “paragraph” appears in 1490, at which time it meant,“a short horizontal stroke drawn below the beginning of a line in which a break in the sense occurs,” coming into the language via French from Greek meaning a mark next to or alongside (“Paragraph,” Oxford, 1401); the meaning of arranging or dividing into paragraphs first appears THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2011 in 1799, though in 1601 the idea of a paragraph as a separate short notice appears (“Paragraph, Oxford, 1429) . Thus the term or idea appears as a printer’s convention, though the concept of what exactly such marks indicate other than a change in sense, emerges in a brief secondary definition appearing in 1940: “a distinct section or subdivision of a discourse, chapter, or writing, whether of one or many sentences, that forms a rhetorical unit [a term I will revisit later] as dealing with a particular point of the subject, or as comprising the words of a distinct speaker, etc.”(“Paragraph,” Webster’s, 1193) . However, these mainstream origins and definitions are out of touch (perhaps blissfully so) with the permutations of composition studies, for the most part already in lockstep with the Johns Hopkins University paradigm of scientific scholarship, regardless of discipline. This scientific model, begun in application, I suspect most of us are aware, toward the close of the 19th century at Harvard and elsewhere in response to a literary exam failed by more than half of the applicants in 1874 (Richardson), is clearly revealed in a text published before the Great War: A Study of the Paragraph. Said text preserves, not to say mummifies, for us not only the contemporary definition we most frequently employ but the rationale behind it. Helen Thomas, A.M.,“Formerly Instructor in English, Lexington (Mass) High School, composed the book to make it available “in teaching college classes, in the endeavor to correct one of the greatest faults of college students’compositions,—ignorance of proper paragraph construction”(Thomas 5) . Even though Thomas admits that the construct of the paragraph is “an intangible, elusive subject,” she valiantly proceeds in her definition, relying on her forebears:“Rhetoricians have agreed that in every well-written Paragraph there lies a sentence that states the main thought; moreover, that every succeeding sentence bears a specific relation to the so- THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2011 called Topic Sentence”(7-9) . This logical construct is bringing into coalescence the rhetorician and the Psychologist, the latter, according to Thomas, telling us that the “nature of the growing mind demands the concrete before the abstract”(9) . She reminds us that our “duty” as comp

FAQs

How do the author’s students usually define a paragraph?

Students typically describe it as three to five sentences that develop a single topic or thought and support a thesis, sometimes adding unity and cohesion.

What does the article say about the historical origins of the term “paragraph”?

It traces early meanings to 1490 as a mark indicating a break in sense, notes later developments toward paragraphing as a separate notice, and cites a broader definition emphasizing rhetorical unity.

Why does the author challenge the mainstream paragraph criteria taught in composition classes?

The author argues that conventional definitions and teaching rationales have become out of step with how paragraphing functions in different writing contexts, and suggests evaluating paragraphs by their rhetorical function.

Oct 15, 2026

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