Minutes a day n e w y o r k

–
PA R A G R A P H S   A N D   T O P I C   S E N T E N C E S
–
7 3
www.IELTS4U.blogfa.com

---

Appropriate Paragraph Lengths
There’s no specific rule about how long a paragraph should be, but you can follow some guidelines to make your writ-
ing easier to read and understand. Long paragraphs are hard on the eye. If you’ve written a page or more without a
paragraph break, take a careful look at your ideas. Can they be broken up logically into two or more paragraphs? To
be reader friendly, a typical typed page should have at least one, but preferably, two to four paragraph breaks.
Very short paragraphs look undeveloped, like incomplete thoughts. They should only be used if you have a
sentence (or two) that is important enough to be on its own. A one-sentence paragraph has impact. It stands out
visually, and the pauses before and after the sentence give more time for it to sink in and take hold. However, one-
or two-sentence paragraphs should be used sparingly—no more than one per page, if that often.
Here’s the Congo paragraph again, revised to include a very short paragraph:
The African country of the Democratic Republic of Congo has had a turbulent past. It was colonized by Belgium in
the late nineteenth century and officially declared a Belgian territory by King Leopold in 1895. The country, called the
Belgian Congo after 1908, was under Belgian rule for 65 years. Then, in 1960, after several years of unrest, Congo was
granted independence from Belgium.
But independence came at a price.
For the next five years, the Congo experienced political and social turmoil. Two presidents were elected and deposed,
and there was much arguing over who should run the country and how. Finally, in 1965, a man named Mobutu Sese
Seko rose to power. Though the country was remarkably rich in resources such as diamonds, under Sese Seko’s rule,
the people lived in complete squalor. Still, Sese Seko brought some stability to the region. He ruled for 32 years, until
the people finally rebelled in 1997.
Notice how conspicuous the second paragraph is. By allowing it to stand alone, the writer has made even clearer
her emphasis on the cost of independence for the Republic of Congo.