How many sentences consist of a paragraph

I think the five sentences per paragraph rule is one that teachers use when trying to get students to understand what a paragraph is. I was taught 5 sentences when I was in school, but I always found it limiting and often argued with my teacher about it.

I think teachers teach it for their own ease instead of helping students expand on creating creative paragraphs. Do people really worry about things like this? This seems so trivial. I just write in whatever happens to work is what appears in each paragraph. Do people really take the time to think about how many sentences they have in every paragraph that they write? I think there are specific instances when this is to be considered, but not for the majority of writing. I came here because I was assigned to write a single paragraph on a topic for school and I wanted to know if there was a limit on the number of sentences I could have in it.

I would never normally care, but for this assignment I was curious. We all get frustrated with school at times, but as with most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Learning to get the most out of school even when you may not like it will help you a lot in other aspects of life. My teacher says that paragraphs have to be 5 or more sentences for my essay in 9th grade.

Is this legal? The point of this article is that a paragraph can have different number of sentences depending on the particular type of writing. There is no black and white answer. I am working on a middle school paper about Benedict Arnold. Is it alright to have a ten sentence paragraph? Yeah, this was well written and it looks like my new post 21 paragraph from 1 paragraph.

If I use a direct quote that has multiple sentences inside of the quotations, does it still count for the total number or is it just 1 sentence all together? I paragraph should state the point, give details to support and end. He is cute. He loves me. This is why I love my dog. It simply means allowing the writer to use his or her own discretion to bring to bear individual creativity.

How boring it would have been for the readers as many have already mentioned if every fiction or non-fiction writing was to follow a stereotyped or mechanic paragraphing pattern. I am happy for its fluidity. So, generally you can have more than five-sentences per paragraph.

Sometimes transitions are helpful within a single paragraph to account for an easy read. To ensure a logical progression between paragraphs, use single words or short phrases that relate a paragraph to the previous one.

It feels too hot. What movies might miss is capturing me into the picture and transporting me to somewhere I am not. I cannot live multiple lives through movies, but by books, it seems I do. While the two paragraphs above are related, the reader cannot grasp how one idea jumped to the next. Consider this, where the transition is much smoother:. It feels like I am living multiple lives from my sofa as I browse the pages. And this is what the movies miss. The relationship between one paragraph and the next is crucial in ensuring a logical flow to your ideas.

Each paragraph should show how it relates to the broader argument. A structure as discussed in point 2 of the Rules ensures that your paragraph is not all over the place. A paragraph with no controlling idea can get messy and confuse your readers. It is unclear what the author is talking about here.

Is it about a favorite month, or a favorite day, or the relation between them? Splitting them into two like done in point 1, ensures that the paragraph maintains one topic and smoothly relates to the paragraph that follows. Use it to your advantage by following simple rules:.

What are the struggles you face while deciding the length of a paragraph? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 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.

If you have written a very long paragraph, one that fills a double-spaced typed page, for example, you should check it carefully to see if it should start a new paragraph where the original paragraph wanders from its controlling idea.

On the other hand, if a paragraph is very short only one or two sentences, perhaps , you may need to develop its controlling idea more thoroughly, or combine it with another paragraph. A number of other techniques that you can use to establish coherence in paragraphs are described below.

Repeat key words or phrases. Particularly in paragraphs in which you define or identify an important idea or theory, be consistent in how you refer to it. This consistency and repetition will bind the paragraph together and help your reader understand your definition or description.

Create parallel structures. Parallel structures are created by constructing two or more phrases or sentences that have the same grammatical structure and use the same parts of speech. By creating parallel structures you make your sentences clearer and easier to read. In addition, repeating a pattern in a series of consecutive sentences helps your reader see the connections between ideas. In the paragraph above about scientists and the sense of sight, several sentences in the body of the paragraph have been constructed in a parallel way.

The parallel structures which have been emphasized help the reader see that the paragraph is organized as a set of examples of a general statement.