HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A paragraph () is a self-contained unit of discourse in
writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, or Word processor, digitally represented Symbols (semiot ...
dealing with a particular point or
idea In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being ...
. Though not required by the orthographic conventions of any language with a
writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...
, paragraphs are a conventional means of organizing extended segments of
prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
.


History

The oldest classical British and Latin writing had little or no space between words and could be written in
boustrophedon Boustrophedon is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the le ...
(alternating directions). Over time, text direction (left to right) became standardized.
Word divider In punctuation, a word divider is a glyph that separates written words. In languages which use the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic alphabets, as well as other scripts of Europe and West Asia, the word divider is a blank space, or ''whitespace''. T ...
s and
terminal punctuation Terminal punctuation refers to the punctuation marks used to identify the end of a portion of text. Terminal punctuation marks are also referred to as end marks and stops. In languages using the ISO basic Latin alphabet, terminal punctuation mar ...
became common. The first way to divide sentences into groups was the original ', similar to an
underscore An underscore, ; also called an underline, low line, or low dash; is a line drawn under a segment of text. In proofreading, underscoring is a convention that says "set this text in italic type", traditionally used on Manuscript (publishing), man ...
at the beginning of the new group. The Greek ' evolved into the
pilcrow The pilcrow, ¶, is a handwritten or typographical character used to identify a paragraph. It is also called the paragraph mark (or sign or symbol), paraph, or blind P. The pilcrow may be used at the start of separate paragraphs or to ...
(¶), which in English manuscripts in the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
can be seen inserted inline between sentences. Ancient manuscripts also divided sentences into paragraphs with line breaks (
newline Newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a ...
) followed by an
initial In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
at the beginning of the next paragraph. An initial is an oversized capital letter, sometimes outdented beyond the margin of the text. This style can be seen, for example, in the original
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
manuscript of
Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
. Outdenting is still used in English typography, though not commonly. Modern English typography usually indicates a new paragraph by indenting the first line. This style can be seen in the (handwritten)
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...
from 1787. For additional ornamentation, a hedera leaf or other symbol can be added to the inter-paragraph white space, or put in the indentation space. A second common modern English style is to use no indenting, but add vertical white space to create "block paragraphs." On a typewriter, a double
carriage return A carriage return, sometimes known as a cartridge return and often shortened to CR, or return, is a control character or mechanism used to reset a device's position to the beginning of a line of text. It is closely associated with the line feed a ...
produces a blank line for this purpose; professional typesetters (or
word processing A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...
software) may put in an arbitrary vertical space by adjusting
leading In typography, leading ( ) is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies. In hand typesetting, leading is the thin strips of lead (or aluminium) that were inserted between lines of type in the composing stick to incre ...
. This style is very common in electronic formats, such as on the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
and
email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
. Wikipedia itself employs this format.


Typographical considerations

Professionally printed material in English typically does not indent the first paragraph, but indents those that follow. For example,
Robert Bringhurst Robert Bringhurst Appointments to the Order of Canada (2013). (born 16 October 1946) is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo and from classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote ''The Eleme ...
states that we should "Set opening paragraphs flush left." Bringhurst explains as follows:
The function of a paragraph is to mark a pause, setting the paragraph apart from what precedes it. If a paragraph is preceded by a title or subhead, the indent is superfluous and can therefore be omitted.
''The Elements of Typographic Style'' states that "at least one en pace should be used to indent paragraphs after the first, noting that that is the "practical minimum". An
em space An em (from English '' em quadrat'') is a unit in the field of typography, equal to the currently specified point size. For example, one em in a 16-point typeface is 16 points. Therefore, this unit is the same for all typefaces at a given point s ...
is the most commonly used paragraph indent.
Miles Tinker Miles Albert Tinker (August 22, 1893 – March 4, 1977) was an American author. He is "an internationally recognized authority on legibility of print" who published the results of some of the most comprehensive studies on the legibility of print ev ...
, in his book ''Legibility of Print'', concluded that indenting the first line of paragraphs increases
readability Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. In natural language, the readability of text depends on its content (the complexity of its vocabulary and syntax) and its presentation (such as typographic aspects that a ...
by 7%, on average. When referencing a paragraph, typographic symbol may be used: "See § Background". In modern usage, paragraph initiation is typically indicated by one or more of a preceding blank line,
indentation __FORCETOC__ In the written form of many languages, an indentation or indent is an empty space at the beginning of a line to signal the start of a new paragraph. Many computer languages have adopted this technique to designate "paragraphs" or o ...
, an "
Initial In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
" ("drop cap") or other indication. Historically, the
pilcrow The pilcrow, ¶, is a handwritten or typographical character used to identify a paragraph. It is also called the paragraph mark (or sign or symbol), paraph, or blind P. The pilcrow may be used at the start of separate paragraphs or to ...
symbol() was used in Latin and western European languages. Other languages have their own marks with similar function.
Widows and orphans In typesetting, widows and orphans are lines of text that dangle at the beginning and at the end of a block of text, either at the head or at the foot of a page or of a column of text. Definitions ;Widow: A paragraph-ending line that falls ...
occur when the first line of a paragraph is the last in a column or page, or when the last line of a paragraph is the first line of a new column or page.


In computing

In
word processing A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...
and
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...
, a hard return or paragraph break indicates a new paragraph, to be distinguished from the soft return at the end of a line internal to a paragraph. This distinction allows
word wrap Line breaking, also known as word wrapping, is breaking a section of text into lines so that it will fit into the available width of a page, window or other display area. In text display, line wrap is continuing on a new line when a line is ful ...
to automatically re-flow text as it is edited, without losing paragraph breaks. The software may apply vertical white space or indenting at paragraph breaks, depending on the selected style. How such documents are actually stored depends on the
file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...
. For example,
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
uses the <p> tag as a paragraph container. In
plaintext In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted. Overview With the advent of comp ...
files, there are two common formats. The pre-formatted text will have a
newline Newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a ...
at the end of every physical line, and two newlines at the end of a paragraph, creating a blank line. An alternative is to only put newlines at the end of each paragraph, and leave word wrapping up to the application that displays or processes the text. A line break that is inserted manually, and preserved when re-flowing, may still be distinct from a paragraph break, although this is typically not done in
prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
.
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
's <br /> tag produces a line break without ending the paragraph; the
W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
recommends using it only to separate lines of verse (where each "paragraph" is a
stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian language, Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or Indentation (typesetting), indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme scheme, rhyme and ...
), or in a
street address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along ...
.


Numbering

Paragraphs are commonly numbered using the decimal system, where (in books) the integral part of the decimal represents the number of the chapter and the fractional parts are arranged in each chapter in order of magnitude. Thus in Whittaker and Watson's 1921 ''
A Course of Modern Analysis ''A Course of Modern Analysis: an introduction to the general theory of infinite processes and of analytic functions; with an account of the principal transcendental functions'' (colloquially known as Whittaker and Watson) is a landmark textb ...
'', chapter 9 is devoted to Fourier Series; within that chapter §9.6 introduces Riemann's theory, the following section §9.61 treats an associated function, following §9.62 some properties of that function, following §9.621 a related lemma, while §9.63 introduces Riemann's main theorem, and so on. Whittaker and Watson attribute this system of numbering to
Giuseppe Peano Giuseppe Peano (; ; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The stand ...
on their "Contents" page, although this attribution does not seem to be widely credited elsewhere.
Gradshteyn and Ryzhik ''Gradshteyn and Ryzhik'' (''GR'') is the informal name of a comprehensive table of integrals originally compiled by the Russian mathematicians I. S. Gradshteyn and I. M. Ryzhik. Its full title today is ''Table of Integrals, Series, and Products ...
is another book using this scheme since its third edition in 1951.


Section breaks

Many published books use a device to separate certain paragraphs further when there is a change of scene or time. This extra space, especially when co-occurring at a page or section break, may contain a special symbol known as a
dinkus In typography, a dinkus is a typographic symbol which often consists of three spaced asterisks in a horizontal row, i.e. . The symbol has a variety of uses, and it usually denotes an intentional omission or a logical "break" of varying degree i ...
, a fleuron, or a stylistic
dingbat In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or a ...
.


Style advice

The crafting of clear, coherent paragraphs is the subject of considerable stylistic debate. The form varies among different types of writing. For example, newspapers, scientific journals, and fictional essays have somewhat different conventions for the placement of paragraph breaks. A common English usage misconception is that a paragraph has three to five sentences; single-word paragraphs can be seen in some professional writing, and journalists often use single-sentence paragraphs. English students are sometimes taught that a paragraph should have a
topic sentence In expository writing, a topic sentence is a sentence that summarizes the main idea of a paragraph. It is usually the first sentence in a paragraph. Also known as a focus sentence, it encapsulates or organizes an entire paragraph. Although topic s ...
or "main idea", preferably first, and multiple "supporting" or "detail" sentences that explain or supply evidence. One technique of this type, intended for essay writing, is known as the
Schaffer paragraph The Jane Schaffer method is a formula for essay writing that is taught in some U.S. middle schools and high schools. Developed by a San Diego teacher named Jane Schaffer, who started offering training and a 45-day curriculum in 1995, it is inten ...
. Topic sentences are largely a phenomenon of school-based writing, and the convention does not necessarily obtain in other contexts. This advice is also culturally specific, for example, it differs from stock advice for the construction of paragraphs in Japanese (translated as ''danraku'' 段落).


See also

*
Inverted pyramid (journalism) The inverted pyramid is a metaphor used by journalists and other writers to illustrate how information should be prioritised and structured in prose (e.g., a news report). It is a common method for writing news stories and has wide adaptability t ...


Notes


References

*''
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'' (''AHD'') is an American English, American dictionary of English published by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969. ...
''. 4th ed. New York:
Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
, 2000. *
Johnson, Samuel Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709  – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
.
Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, etc.
'.
Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...
, November 2003.
E-Book An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
, #4673. *Rozakis, Laurie E. ''Master the AP English Language and Composition Test''. Lawrenceville, NJ:
Peterson's Peterson's, founded in 1966, is an American company that has a wide range of print and digital products and services, including test preparation, career exploration tools, memory retention techniques, and school, financial aid, and scholarship se ...
, 2000. (10). (13).


External links

* {{Typography terms Typography Writing