Minutes a day n e w y o r k

I’m guilty of silent deceptions, too. Last year, I discovered that my friend’s boyfriend was seeing someone else. I kept
quiet about it because I didn’t want to hurt my friend. A few weeks, later, someone else told her about the two-timing—
and I told her I knew about it.
She couldn’t believe that I deceived her like that. She felt just as betrayed as if I’d lied to her face about it. Her
boyfriend’s deception ruined their relationship. My deception destroyed our friendship.
Relevance
If you’ve identified more than one idea in a paragraph, you should probably break it into two paragraphs. But before
you move text, make sure each idea is clearly related to the thesis. If it’s not, it needs to be reworked or deleted.
(If you didn’t catch it when you were revising the big picture, here’s another chance.) Remember the importance
of maintaining focus in your essay—unrelated paragraphs not only get you off track, but also often confuse read-
ers as well.
Development
Once you’ve identified the controlling idea of each paragraph, check to see that each idea is sufficiently developed.
Topic sentences, like thesis statements, make assertions about your subject. And those assertions need support.
Look carefully at any paragraph that consists of only one or two sentences. Chances are, they’re seriously under-
developed. The only time you should have a one-sentence paragraph is when you intentionally decide to empha-
size the idea in that sentence.