ClearTips: Powerful paragraphs

Ask a question at the end of one paragraph and answer it at the beginning of the next

Questions suggest answers. Posing a question at the end of a paragraph signals the reader to look for your answer in the next.

Having to announce a big drop in profits is not the way any chairman would choose to mark his second week on the job. That was the unenviable task of the new chief of J.P. Morgan, one of America's oldest and mightiest banks, on January 12. Douglas Warner disclosed that the bank's net profit in 1994 was $1.2 billion, 29% less than in 1993. So why does he look so cheerful?
     Perhaps because he thinks the bank's hardest work has been done. Morgan is at the tail end of a metamorphosis that started in the late 1970s, when this starched commercial bank saw big corporate borrowers turning in their masses from bank loans toward cheaper sources of capital, such as bonds. Under the chairmanship of Sir Dennis Weatherstone, Morgan changed further, concentrating resources on the fee-earning businesses, such as advising clients, and on trading securities. By the end of 1993, noninterest income accounted for 72% of Morgan's earnings, compared with 39% a decade earlier.

A bare two years before the ceremonial opening of St Peter's Holy Door hails the new millennium, Romans are scratching their heads. How can the eternal city cope with an expected influx of millions? Will the traffic flow? Can Rome, even with help from central coffers, afford the sort of projects that the jubilee's organizers deem essential? Will they, budgets willing, be ready on time?
     Do not bet on it. The space problem is the oldest and worst. For hundreds of years, fragile old Rome has been hard put to embrace a few hundred thousand pilgrims—let alone the 20m-40m expected in the millennial year. Rome lacks vast open spaces. The Piazza San Giovanni, the city's biggest, is chock-full with about 170,000 people; Piazza del Popolo can hold a mere 62,000.

In the second example, a flood of questions gets a simple answer at the start of the second paragraph, quickly dismissing any possibility that Rome might cope.

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