Not every subject you may be called upon to write about can be
satisfactorily developed within the limited scope of the single paragraph. For example, a
single paragraph arguing the prohibition of handguns in the U.S. would probably not
produce enough proof to persuade most audiences to agree.
This lesson is the first in a sequence of eight designed to help
you arrange individual paragraphs--themselves unified, coherent and well developed--into
multi-paragraph papers which satisfy the same criteria.
Organizing such a paper is a logical and systematic exercise, or
at least it should be. A well written paper begins by attracting the reader and by
arousing interest in the subject matter. Lesson 34 will suggest some techniques for
"hooking" your reader by creating interesting introductory paragraphs.
But that is not enough. Once you have the reader's attention, you
must deliver the merchandise. Put in another way, there is not much point in arousing the
reader's curiosity unless you are prepared to satisfy that curiosity.
Every point established in the introduction should have a corresponding
paragraph in the body of the essay.
If the reader can follow your explanations and can understand the
scheme of reasoning which underlies your arguments, you are likely to both communicate the
desired information and to persuade that reader to agree with you.
Since organization is basically a matter of being logical, it is
not surprising that most expository and persuasive papers are arranged in a manner which
corresponds to one of the two basic patterns in which human beings reason: these basic
patterns are called inductive and deductive.