How many sentences should a paragraph have in an essay

Paragraphing (Length Consistency)

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Summary:

The purpose of this handout is to give some basic instruction and advice regarding the creation of understandable and coherent paragraphs.

Paragraphs are units of thought with one adequately developed idea. Listed here are some rules of thumb to use when paragraphing. As your writing improves, you'll be able to break these "rules" to meet your own needs. Until then, these suggestions can be helpful.

• Put only one main idea per paragraph.
• Aim for three to five or more sentences per paragraph.
• Include on each page about two handwritten or three typed paragraphs.
• Make your paragraphs proportional to your paper. Since paragraphs do less work in short papers, have short paragraphs for short papers and longer paragraphs for longer papers.
• If you have a few very short paragraphs, think about whether they are really parts of a larger paragraph—and can be combined—or whether you can add details to support each point and thus make each into a more fully developed paragraph.

You can check on whether your paragraphs are balanced by looking at your paper.

Some balanced pages:

Paragraph Balance

Unbalanced pages with ideas not equally developed:

Unbalanced Paragraphs

Use the following graphics as a tool to organize your paper with one main idea in each box. Use as many pages and boxes as needed.

Graphics to Help with Balance and Organization

Various educators teach rules governing the length of paragraphs. They may say that a paragraph should be 100 to 200 words long, or be no more than five or six sentences. But a good paragraph should not be measured in characters, words, or sentences. The true measure of your paragraphs should be ideas.

How many sentences are in a paragraph?

Your childhood teacher did not wrong you when they taught you that there should be three, or four, or five sentences in a paragraph. It is important to understand, however, that the aim in teaching this was not to impart a hard-and-fast rule of grammar, drawn from an authoritative-but-dusty book. The true aim of this strategy was to teach you that your ideas must be well supported to be persuasive and effective.

Here’s a tip: Want to make sure your

The model regarding paragraph length that your teacher undoubtedly taught you involves a topic sentence, a number of facts that support that core idea, and a concluding sentence. The proviso about the number of sentences between the topic sentence and the conclusion was not given to you because it was the magic formula for creating paragraphs of the perfect length; rather, your educator was attempting to give you a good reason to do adequate research on your topic. Academic writing yields the best examples of the topic-support-conclusion paragraph structure.

You can see from this example how a topic is introduced, supported, and then brought to its natural conclusion. Yet, not all writing is academic, and once you have learned the concept behind good paragraph construction—which is really the art of focused writing in disguise—you should know that there are times when paragraph “rules” can, and should, be broken.

READ: Splitting Paragraphs for Easier Reading

How to write paragraphs people want to read

The fact of the matter is that although you may have numerous valid facts or descriptions related to your paragraph’s core idea, you may lose a reader’s attention if your paragraphs are too long. What’s more, if all of your paragraphs are long, you may lose opportunities to draw your reader in. Journalists, for example, know that their readers respond better to short paragraphs. News readers generally lose interest with long descriptions and even one-sentence paragraphs are considered both acceptable and impactful.

They weren’t.

The cat hospital was gone.