We spend our lives making sense of the world by putting things into categories. If we are junior-high school teachers, we wonder if a new student will be an easy-going chap or a trouble-maker. In either case, we are comparing and contrasting that kid with other kids we have taught. Parents look at their  kids  [...]

A cause makes a thing happen; an effect is what results when that thing happens. If you brush your teeth and your teeth get white, then brushing is the cause and whitening the effect. A cause-and-effect paragraph helps us understand why things happen: the tsunami in Japan, the war in Vietnam, the spike in teenage [...]

A process paragraph is a series of steps that explain how something happens. Or it explains how to make something. It can explain anything from the growth of a malignancy to parallel parking to baking sourdough bread. It gives tips for conquering insomnia or for removing nose hair. Because such explanations must be clear, the [...]

Narration A narrative paragraph tells a story through a sequence of events. This kind of paragraph usually includes a topic sentence, or main idea; the rest of the paragraph develops that idea. A clearly-written narrative paragraph does not, however, cover too much territory. It focuses on a single event. The following narrative paragraph tells how [...]