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Paragraphs must follow the thought pattern in the same manner sentences follow the preceding thought by adding to it. The critical part of writing paragraphs is knowing when to begin the next paragraphs. This basically is what this guide is about. This art you will learn as you lwrite. This comes easy if you keep your readers in mind as you begin your first draft. If you in one big block of print it will confuse you and will make it hard for you to see where you have ever so slightly changed your thought pattern when you begin to put together your final version. Getting in the habit of making the first copy as complete as possible saves lots of work later on.

It need not be a complete break but an addition of something that mentally adds a new thought to the first sentence of the paragraph. I started this break to show that the first paragraph addressed itself to knowing when to start a new paragraph. The supporting sentences supported the reason for new paragraphs and the second paragraph tells you it is okay to break the thought pattern into other paragraphs with only slight direction changes.

With online reading being more difficult than reading books or magazine, it is necessary to know how to write successful paragraphs in both media. Online long blocks of writing is out. Break those into easy to read short paragraphs and make it easy on the eyes of those who are in need of the information and who may not notice, or even care, that it took two paragraphs to fully describe why and when and how you can start new shorter blocks of writing.

It is not necessary to match up the size of the paragraphs, a few can be longer if the first sentence needs the backup of six or seven sentences other than three or four. You as the writer decides this and as you write and become more adept at your craft. Knowing when to begin a new block will be almost automatic. You can visually imagine you are walking toward a goal and your destination will not be a straight path forward but will have twists and turns but no detours.

Watch out for detours. This is when an interesting sentence leads you away from you initial intention of the topic. This topic is about how to guide writers toward better paragraph structure. Many time when we write at our finish we will notice we got sidetracked by some thought that beckoned us to leave the road we are mentally traveling and to take up another idea. We cannot. What we do is to jot down the idea and make it into a completely new article.

If the idea is appealing and is accepted and adds meaning to the sentence that prompted it, you can pause momentarily and mention it and then move on in the direction your topic points toward. You do this by adding an em dash - in this fashion - and then promptly picking your sentence thought again.

The intruding idea could be another article idea waiting to be developed. It is, in essence, another idea flagging for your attention and you, being the polite writer that you are, put a sentence marker in place - an em dash - attend to the idea and then get back to where you were. It could have been nothing more than the thought, how do I know when I have reached my destination on this writing journey? When you've nothing more to say on the subject.

Yet polite writing societies insist it is rude to stop without a final statement. You end with a thought worthy of remembering, something that puts the topic in focus, or even a quote that sums up the whole process. You do not drop your pencil, shut down your computer and disappear without a final salute to whatever you once thought important enough to write about. Writing that readers want to read is that important and paragraphs have them
neatly arranged.

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