5.3 Body Paragraphs

The term body paragraph refers to any paragraph that appears between the introductory and concluding sections of an essay. A good body paragraph should support the claim made in the thesis statement by developing only one key supporting idea. Your thesis gives the reader a road map to your essay, and your body paragraphs should closely follow that map. The body paragraphs present the ideas that support your thesis, using the various rhetorical strategies that you find most effectively address your subject, audience, and purpose. This idea is often referred to as a sub-claim.

Some sub-claims will take more time to develop than others, so body paragraph length can and often should vary in order to maintain your reader’s interest. When constructing a body paragraph, the most important objectives are to stay on topic and to fully develop your sub-claim.

While there is no “right way” to develop a paragraph, there are certain criteria that an academic paragraph should work to be:

• Unified: Every sentence presented works to explain the main idea of the paragraph.
• Coherent: You present the information in a logical order that allows the audience to understand your purpose.
• Developed: To achieve this, you must provide enough information so that the audience has a clear understanding of the main idea expressed in the topic sentence.

Developing a paragraph can be a difficult task for many students. They usually approach the task with certain ideas firmly in mind, most notably that a paragraph is 5-6 sentences and the paragraph is about what they are talking about, which isn’t necessarily a bad place to start. But when pushed to explain more specifically what constitutes a good paragraph or how to present the information they will discuss, problems begin to emerge. Perhaps the easiest way to think about a “fully developed” paragraph is to think of writing each paragraph in 6 different steps rather than a certain number of sentences.  These steps can be helpful in not only understanding the criteria needed in a paragraph or how they connect to one another to create a conversation in your paper but also ensuring that your audience understands your purpose in presenting this paragraph.

The 6 Steps to Developing a Body Paragraph

1. Establish a Main Idea (Topic).

It is important to begin a paragraph with a clear, concise, and limited topic sentence. Many problems with unity and coherence begin with a faulty or vague topic sentence. Being able to recognize the parts of a topic sentence will help you maintain a unified paragraph. If we break a basic topic sentence down, there are two distinct parts: The topic being discussed + your controlling idea.

Use a transitional device to effortlessly segue from the idea discussed in the previous paragraph. When choosing a transitional device, you should consider whether your new paragraph will build onto the topic of your previous paragraph, begin to develop a new key idea or sub-claim, or present a counterargument or concession.

Identify the key idea or sub-claim that you intend to expand upon in your new paragraph. Even if you are building on the idea of the previous paragraph, you will still need to identify the sub-claim in your topic sentence. When constructing a topic sentence, you may feel as though you are stating the obvious or being repetitive, but your readers will need this information to guide them to a thorough understanding of your ideas.

Make a connection to the claim you make in your thesis statement. It might help to think of your topic sentence as a mini-thesis statement. In your body paragraph, you should expand upon the claim you make in your thesis. For this reason, you should link your topic sentence to your thesis statement. Doing so tells your readers, “This is the point I mentioned in my thesis that I now intend to support and either prove or explain further.”

2. Provide an Explanation

This step may be a bit of a trap.  Many students are often tempted to reach for their research and begin providing support for the main idea. However, this isn’t always the best option. Many times when students do this, they are using their research/ support to think of them. Before reaching for the research, students should explain their topic sentence.

You can also think of this section as a link between the topic sentence and supporting evidence, where you provide any necessary contextual information for the evidence.

The main focus of any paragraph should be what you have to say. If you are putting forth this idea in support of your thesis, the audience is going to want to know what you think about it: what is significant about this main idea. They may not fully understand the topic sentence the way you intend them to, so explain your reasoning to the reader.

3. Provide Support/ Evidence

Now that your audience should have a better understanding of the main idea/ topic, you are ready to provide support/ evidence. You want to be very selective when deciding what textual support to include in the paragraph. Not all evidence is the same, and not all evidence achieves the same goals (thinking ethos/ logos/ pathos here). The textual support should help to reinforce or illustrate more about your topic sentence for the reader, helping them understand it more completely.

Supporting your ideas effectively is essential to establishing your credibility as a writer, so you should choose your supporting evidence wisely and clearly explain it to your audience. Understanding and appealing to your audience can also help determine what your readers will consider good support and what they’ll consider to be weak.

Present your supporting evidence in the form of paraphrases and direct quotations. Quotations should be used sparingly; that said, direct quotations are often handy when you would like to illustrate a particularly well-written passage or draw attention to an author’s use of tone, diction, or syntax that would likely become lost in a paraphrase. Varying your means of support will lend further credibility to your essay and help to maintain your reader’s interest. Keep in mind that some types of support are more appropriate for certain academic disciplines than for others. Whether your support takes the form of a direct quote or a paraphrase, it must be properly embedded and documented. Types of support might include the following:

• Statistics and data
• Research studies and scholarship
• Hypothetical and real-life examples
• Historical facts
• Analogies
• Applicable personal experiences or anecdotes

Strong support is relevant, focused, and clearly connected to the main point. It is well developed, provides sufficient detail, and uses vivid, descriptive language to clarify ideas. It is also organized, coherent, and consistent, with a logical flow that emphasizes key terms and central concepts.

Weak support lacks a clear connection to the main point and is often underdeveloped or uneven in detail. It may be vague, imprecise, or disorganized, resulting in writing that feels disjointed. It also tends to overlook key terms and important ideas, making the overall message less clear.

4. Interpret the Support/ Evidence

Rather than assuming that the evidence you have provided speaks for itself, it is important to explain why that evidence proves or supports the key idea you present in your topic sentence and (ultimately) the claim you make in your thesis statement.

This is often one of the more difficult aspects for students, and a step in the development that they overlook. No matter how clear you think the textual support provided is, it does not speak for itself. The reason is that the audience may not understand how you intend them to interpret the information, and how that relates to supporting the main idea of the paragraph. When you explain how this information is relevant to your topic sentence, and why it is significant, you need to offer insight into that information.

Try to avoid simply repeating the source material differently or using phrases like “This quote means” to begin your explanation. Keep in mind that your voice should control your essay and guide your audience to a greater understanding of the source material’s relevance to your claim. The bulk of the information should be coming from you, not your sources. Your audience wants to know what it is that you think, your perspective on the idea, and how you intend to link it back to the thesis.

5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4, if necessary

If you have more than one piece of textual support that you want to include, you need to repeat the two previous steps to fully develop your paragraph. You will want to vary your evidence. If you use statistics, then you may want to include expert testimony. If the first piece of evidence focuses on logic, you want to tap into one of the other appeals, such as pathos, to bring a full view of the issue to your reader. However, you don’t want to keep simply repeating this sequence: evidence should be used to help achieve your purpose, not to fill space.

6. A Concluding Sentence and/or Transition

When you feel that your audience has a clear understanding of your idea and its significance to your thesis, you can wrap up the paragraph by emphasize the importance of understanding the idea or make a connection to previous and/or forthcoming ideas. Overall, ensure that the information is related directly back to the main purpose of the essay as defined in your thesis statement.

While this is not the only way to write a paragraph, it can be a helpful guide and/or model when you need a structure to begin shaping and organizing your ideas, to help you compose a unified, coherent, well-developed paragraph.

At the end of particularly long paragraphs, you may include a sentence that summarizes the main idea of that paragraph and gives it closure. The concluding sentence can also serve as a transition to the next paragraph preparing the reader for what’s to come. But remember not to conclude your body paragraph with more supporting evidence.

Organizing Body Paragraphs

Even though you might have an overall structure for your essay and all your main ideas planned, the best order for those ideas and their body paragraphs may not be apparent. However, the method of organization in an essay can be just as important as its content. Without a clear organizational pattern, your reader could become confused and lose interest. The way you structure your essay helps your readers draw connections between the body and the thesis, and the structure also keeps you focused as you plan and write the essay. Choosing your organizational pattern before you outline ensures that each body paragraph works to support and develop your thesis.

When you begin to draft your essay, your ideas may seem to flow from your mind in a seemingly random manner. Your readers, who bring to the table different backgrounds, viewpoints, and ideas, need you to organize these ideas to help process and accept them.

A solid organizational pattern gives your ideas a path that you can follow as you develop your draft. Knowing how you will organize your paragraphs allows you to better express and analyze your thoughts. Planning the structure of your essay before you choose supporting evidence helps you conduct more effective and targeted research.

Chronological order organizes information based on time. It is commonly used to explain the history of a topic, tell a story, or describe the steps in a process. When using this method, events are arranged in the order they happened (or will happen), and transition words such as first, then, next, and finally help guide the reader. This structure is especially useful in expository and research-based writing, as well as in essays that analyze events or literary works.

Order of importance arranges ideas based on their significance. It is often used in persuasive writing to convince readers or highlight key points. Writers typically build from the least to the most important idea, though in some cases—especially with strong or debatable claims—it is more effective to begin with the most compelling point. Transitions like most importantly, equally important, and finally help emphasize the ranking of ideas.

Spatial order organizes details based on physical location or position. This method is commonly used in descriptive writing to help readers visualize a scene. The writer chooses a clear starting point and then guides the reader through the space in a logical direction, using sensory details and clear cues to create a vivid and coherent image.