ClearTips: Powerful paragraphs

Imply the point in a series of questions

Turning everything into a question emphasizes the unknown elements of an issue and gives a paragraph a sense of insistence. The questions can express frustration or concern. They can also plant doubt, hope, or curiosity. And they can highlight the many sides of an issue.

Keep in mind, though, that questions unanswered generally leave your reader anxious—just as an unresolved chord would. So, one good use of this pattern is in the opening of a piece, to set up questions that you will discuss and answer later.

But if there is indeed a connection between population and conflict, how does it work? What is its "operational chemistry"? Do population problems directly and inevitably lead to violence? Or do they work indirectly, for example, in catalytic conjunction with other factors such as environmental decline? If the latter, does the "other-factor" complication make population itself less potent as a source of conflict? Or does it make it all the more dangerous, in that population pressures then work in less overt, and hence less heeded, fashion?

Other times, the questions may be merely questioning, rhetorically:

Should the UN still be trying to put the world to rights? Should it concentrate on social justice? Should it intervene in the civil conflicts that have become more common than wars between states? Should it curl up and die? And, if it is to lead an active life, how can it, when the poor thing is both despised and broke, its major debtors either refusing (the U.S.), or unable (Russia), to pay their bills?

And still other times, the series can support (quite explicitly) the opening point:

How did things break down? What public ethics reign in a land whose police can kill 111 inmates in a raid on a security prison—and none of the policemen goes to jail, while ten are promoted? Where the head of the tax department has to resign for daring to levy duty on the 17 tons of booty brought back by Brazil footballers last summer with the newly won World Cup? Where a state governor can walk into a restaurant, shoot his rival, walk away to applause, and win a Senate seat by a landslide? Where society gasps when the president watches carnival arm-in-arm with a semiclad samba dancer, but barely cares that the box he sat in belongs to racketeers?

As these paragraphs show, implication doesn't necessarily mean subtlety. Used occasionally, the pattern can be powerful.

Back to Powerful paragraphs • Next