ClearTips: Powerful paragraphs

Lead with the point and, using conjunctions, join details

If you have, say, three supporting sentences of equal weight (none more important than the others), try linking them with also and and in the pattern shown here: X is . . . , X is also . . . , and X is . . . . By using these conjunctions and the same pronoun in each sentence, you can stress the equality or sequence of the details, pulling your readers through the paragraph.

At first sight the virtues of teamwork look obvious. Teams make workers happier by giving them the feeling that they are shaping their own jobs. They also increase efficiency by eliminating layers of managers whose job was once to pass orders downwards. And, in principle, they enable a company to draw on the skills and imagination of a whole workforce, instead of relying on a specialist to watch out for mistakes and suggest improvements.

Germany is generous to immigrants. For a start, and in deference to their bloodline, it receives each year more than 200,000 Russians, the Aussiedler (outsettlers) whose German ancestors moved to Russia two centuries ago. On moral grounds, it takes in any Russian Jews who want to come. It has also admitted (in theory temporarily, though it may turn out permanently) more than half the entire outflow of refugees from the wars in the Balkans. And until three years ago, when it tightened its wide-open asylum laws, it received a good three-quarters of all third-world asylum-seekers reaching the European Union. Beyond that, it is home to some 2m Turkish immigrants originally taken in as "guest workers."

Note how this pattern strings the details together, injecting pace. The starting point is to look for details that start with—or could start with—the same subject and that appear to be of roughly equal importance. It works best if you have three details.

Back to Powerful paragraphs • Next