ClearTips: Powerful paragraphs

Lead with the point and support it

The most common way to develop a paragraph is to state the point in the first sentence and support it, in subsequent sentences, with evidence: details, examples, and comments. When you lead with the point, your reader can identify it immediately, and a skimmer can pick up your line of argument by reading the first sentence of each paragraph. This form of development is what most of us use for two-thirds of our writing.

Motorists can be a lonely lot. They may get periodic traffic updates along with the news, chat and music from their car radios. With cell phones, they can even talk back to the outside world—asking for directions and apologising for being late. But, by and large, drivers are cut off more than most people from the torrent of information that pervades modern life. And it's a good thing, too, some might say.

After the point about secular trends, the second sentence identifies one trend and the third elaborates on it, while the fourth identifies another trend and the fifth, sixth, and seventh elaborate on it.

Here are two more paragraphs with leading points that are clearly supported in the sentences that follow them:

As big trees go, the baobab, Adansonia digitata, is a whopper. While it doesn't have the majestic height of North America's sequoia or the serpentine grandeur of Africa's red-leaved ficus, it has, well, presence. In fact, South Africa's bushmen believe the tree, some time after its creation, offended the gods, who then commanded it to grow upside down. And in the winter dry season, when the baobab loses its leaves, that's what it looks like—a massive, squat succulent, with its roots sticking up in the air.

In America, the second most important cause of increased income inequality has been a change in household structure. In the 1950s most households consisted of two parents, only one of whom was a wage-earner. Now society is more polarized between two-earner households and jobless single parent families. It is hard for single mothers to earn good incomes. The proportion of families headed by women among the poorest fifth of households has doubled over the past 40 years to around 35%. In contrast, the richest fifth of households is increasingly dominated by high-income two-earner couples: well-paid women tend to marry rich men.

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