Read any book-form reprint of a journalist’s collected writings
and you will notice that these short paragraph lengths do not
work at all with larger pages. Instead the journalist’s text comes
across as far too chopped-up, with up to six or seven paragraphs
on each book page, and twelve or so on each double-page
spread. Professional academic work is always configured for
printing as books or journal articles. Here the printed page typ-
ically holds around 500 words. The ideal length for paragraphs
is one that divides each page several times, but not too freneti-
cally. A good aim point is hence around 150 words (half an A4
page printed double-spaced). But paragraph lengths of between
100 and 200 words (a third to two-thirds of an A4 page) are
perfectly acceptable.
A good way to keep track of paragraph lengths is to make
sure that you can see each paragraph in its entirety on the
screen of your PC (using 1.5 or double spacing to make your
text easily readable). Where a paragraph goes appreciably
longer than a single screenful, consider whether it should be
split up. Where a paragraph occupies only a small part of your
screen, ask yourself whether it should be merged with the
paragraph before or after it. Never leave very short (one- or two-
sentence) paragraphs hanging around, because they are disrup-
tive of the overall flow of the text. Always integrate them into
one or other of their neighbours.
The sequence of material within paragraphs should generally
follow the Topic, Body, Wrap formula. The first ‘topic’ sentence
makes clear what the paragraph addresses, what its focus is on.
The main ‘body’ of the paragraph comes next, giving reason-
ing, justification, elaboration, analysis or evidence. The final
‘wrap’ sentence makes clear the bottom-line message of the
paragraph, the conclusion you have reached. Readers will
always pay special attention to the opening, topic sentence of a
paragraph, to glean as economically as they can what it is
about. And they will also focus more on the last, wrap sentence,
trying to garner the guts of your argument without reading the
whole paragraph in detail. Many readers may only ‘eyeball’ the
‘body’ text, or will skim it in advance of detailed reading, in
effect deciding whether to read it and how intensively. Such
people may fasten on little else but the topic and wrap sen-
tences, which hence need to be written with especial care.
112 ◆AUTHORING A PHD