Overview of Types of Paragraphs

The introduction for this course mentioned that Jensen's Format Writing starts with paragraphs since they can often stand on their own even if they are part of a bigger essay.

Jensen's Format Writing gives these formats for the paragraph.

1. Example
2. Classification
3. Definition
4. Process
5. Analogy
6. Cause and Effect
7. Comparison

Actually, these are all different formats for "exposition" or "explanation"-type writing -- that is, non-fiction. The ideas of example, process, analogy and so on are used in fictional writing, but you probably won't usually find a specific paragraph in a fiction story that is focused on one of those things. That's because it would unbalance the pace, right? Fiction relies on narrative and description. (That's why we aren't using Jensen's book alone -- because our focus this year is on fiction).

Still, Jensen's categories are useful in some ways. We'll go into that later on.

This site lists these patterns for paragraphs:

1. Narration Paragraph
2. Exposition Paragraph
3. Definition Paragraph
4. Classification Paragraph
5. Description Paragraph
6. Process Analysis Paragraph
7. Persuasion Paragraph

You can see it's similar to Jensen's.

Go on to next section