Extended "discourse," such as class presentations or essays written as school assignments, has a particular structure arising from particular expectations and standards. Such structure, expectations, ...

Use a defined format with an introduction, body and a conclusion to organize your thoughts logically Include relevant facts, examples, and explanations in each body paragraph. Also reflect on their ...

In her 1989 book The Writing Life, Annie Dillard describes a fellow writer who was asked by a student if she thought he might become a writer. “Well, do you like sentences?” the fellow writer said.

In the most abstract sense, the function of an introductory paragraph is to move the reader from the world of daily life into the textual and analytical space of an essay. In a more concrete sense, an ...

Each of the paragraphs below contains three underlined sentences. Read each paragraph and then click on the sentence (or sentences) that you think is the topic sentence of that paragraph. Carpeting ...

Paragraph transition is the movement between paragraphs, specifically how effectively logical order and transitions/transitional devices are used. Arranging ...

Review the structure of an introduction (for instance "inverted funnel," i.e., general to specific topics). An introduction should teach readers enough about the subject to read the paper, and should ...

The word essay derives from the title of a 1580 collection of writings by the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne. In his Essays, Montaigne set down his thoughts on whatever subject snared his ...

After several years of teaching data analytics, I have come to an agreement that at the end of each academic semester, I will suffer through grading between 20 and 40 group reports. Each report is ...

Reading and writing were always my favorite subjects when I was in school, and I can still remember when I was taught that a proper paragraph had five sentences in it. It was probably around fourth ...