Editing Paragraph (section)

==Style advice==

The crafting of clear, coherent paragraphs is the subject of considerable stylistic debate.  The form varies among different types of writing.  For example, newspapers, scientific journals, and fictional essays have somewhat different conventions for the placement of paragraph breaks.

A [[List of common English usage misconceptions#Usage|common English usage misconception]] is that a paragraph has three to five sentences; single-word paragraphs can be seen in some professional writing, and journalists often use single-sentence paragraphs.<ref name="UNC">{{cite web|url=https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/paragraphs/|title=Paragraph Development|author=University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill|work=The Writing Center|publisher=University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill|access-date=20 June 2018}}</ref>

English students are sometimes taught that a paragraph should have a [[topic sentence]] or "main idea", preferably first, and multiple "supporting" or "detail" sentences that explain or supply evidence.  One technique of this type, intended for essay writing, is known as the [[Schaffer paragraph]]. Topic sentences are largely a phenomenon of school-based writing, and the convention does not necessarily obtain in other contexts.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Braddock |first=Richard |date=1974 |title=The Frequency and Placement of Topic Sentences in Expository Prose |journal=Research in the Teaching of English |volume=8 |issue=3 |pages=287–302}}</ref> This advice is also culturally specific, for example, it differs from stock advice for the construction of paragraphs in Japanese (translated as ''danraku'' 段落).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://jalt.org/pansig/2004/HTML/KimKon.htm|title=Effective writing instruction: From Japanese danraku to English paragraphs|first=Kazumi Kimura and Masako Kondo (timkondo *AT* nifty . com / Kazumikmr *AT* aol .|last=com)|website=jalt.org|access-date=15 March 2018}}</ref>