Memorandum
To: Topics in Tech Comm: Editing Tech Pubs for Style (Eng 572) participants
From: Roland Nord
Date: July 28, 2016
Re: Paragraph structure (Paragraphs.doc)
Following Christensen’s practice in “A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph,” provide
a structural analysis of the following paragraphs from your text (TWS, pages 164 and
167). In so doing, you may find it useful to develop one or more styles.
When finished, reflect on what you learned about Jones’ writing style. Having completed
this exercise, are you more or less impressed with his writing style. Explain. (If the
collaborators disagree, you may need to provide more than one paragraph of
explanation.)
Save your document as Paragraphs_y3i.doc, replacing the “y3i” with your three initials.
(If you collaborate, add each collaborators initials.)
Writing Technical Paragraphs (164)
Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, essays or journal articles, personal letters
or e-mail, business letters or technical instructions, the paragraph is the major building
block for what you want to express to your audience. Some inexperienced writers give
little thought to paragraphs while they write. They don’t worry much about focusing on
one major idea, about developing the topic, about achieving a smooth flow, or providing
adequate details. And, of course, their paragraphs reflect their lack of concern. Many
other writers, however, know it’s as important to give as much thought to effective
paragraphing as to diction and sentences.
This chapter focuses on the strategies necessary for achieving effective paragraphs in
your technical prose. Writing paragraphs of technical prose often presents special
challenges. For example, while many technical paragraphs begin with a topic sentence
(this general-to-particular pattern is the most common in technical prose), many
technical paragraphs have no topic sentence. Instead, they often use a section heading or
summary in place of a topic sentence. And finally, technical prose consists of more than
the words, sentences, and paragraphs of your text. Technical prose occurs in headings,
headers, footers, and numerous other reader aids. All of these aids are important factors
for indicating to your readers what topics you are discussing.
Roland Nord
Page 2
Developing the Paragraph Topic (167)
In addition to being limited to one complete thought, good paragraphs must have a
discernible pattern or order. This pattern or order is how you have chosen to develop
the topic, whether, for example, you have chosen to begin with your topic sentence, or
ask a question, or contrast or define.
Achieving this order is not as easy as it seems because paragraphs do not always fall
into easily recognizable patterns. Many paragraphs begin with a topic sentence, but many
paragraphs do not. A topic sentence may occur at any point in the paragraph. And often
no one sentence expressed the topic, but the paragraph still concerns itself with only one
topic.
The patterns or orders discussed below are actually strategies for developing the
topic of a paragraph. How do you tell what is the best paragraph strategy to use for a
particular subject and a particular audience? Of course, there is no easy answer to this
question either. Different paragraph patterns have different purposes and often affect
audiences in different ways.
A few guidelines are provided to show why some methods of development may be
preferred over others in some cases, but, in many cases, you may be free to choose from
a wide variety of methods of paragraph development to make the same point clear. After
all, all of these methods of development have the common purpose of helping to make
the unfamiliar familiar to readers.