User:Aparagraph

A paragraph (from the Greek paragraphos, "to write beside" or "written beside") is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. Paragraphs consist of one or more sentences. The start of a paragraph is indicated by beginning on a new line. Sometimes the first line is indented. At various times, the beginning of a paragraph has been indicated by the pilcrow: ¶.

A written work — be it an essay or a story — is about an idea or concept. An essay explains it; a story narrates it. To help the reader understand and enjoy it, the explanation or narration is broken down into units of text, the paragraph. In an essay, each paragraph explains or demonstrates a key point or thought of the central idea, usually to inform or persuade. In fiction, each paragraph serves to advance the plot, develop a character, describe a scene or narrate an action — all to entertain the reader. All paragraphs support each other, leading the reader from the first idea to the final resolution of the written work.

Indenting

Some (print) styles do not indent the first paragraph, but do indent all those that subsequently follow. This follows the logic that the purpose of indenting is to separate paragraphs in a way that lets the reader know where one paragraph finishes and another begins. The general American practice is to indicate all paragraphs including the first, by indenting the first line (three to five spaces), whereas business letters generally use blank lines and no indent (these are sometimes known as "block paragraphs"). For other purposes, indented paragraphs are preferred. Most published books use a device to separate certain paragraphs further when there is a change of scene or time. This extra space, especially when co-occurring at a page break, may contain an asterisk, three asterisks, a special stylistic dingbat, or a special symbol known as an asterism.

See also

• Hard return
• Pilcrow
• Topic sentence
• Section (typography)
• Schaffer paragraph

External links

• Paragraphs in HTML 3 from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).