Example Paragraph 1 My friend Mary is a very kind person. She likes helping people. She visits sick people in hospital and she spends time reading to young children at the library. She brings food to her elderly neighbor because he cannot cook for himself anymore. She takes another neighbor's dog for a walk because that person is in a wheelchair. Mary is the kindest person I know.

Example Paragraph 2 Braille Braille is a special system of writing and reading for blind people. Braille letters have groups of bumps or dots. Blind people read these dots by running their fingertips across them to recognize the pattern of the dots. Braille uses a special code of sixty-three characters. Each character has one to six dots that are arranged in a six-position pattern. For example, in the pattern for the letter C, the top two dots are raised, but the lower four are not. Braille gets its name from Louis braille, a blind science and music teacher who invented this special alphabet in 1800s. Millions of blind people are able to read today because of this simple yet effective communication system.

Example Paragraph 3 An Easy Sandwich An egg salad sandwich is one of the easiest and most delicious foods you can make . First, boil three eggs for five minutes. When the eggs are cool, peel away the shells and put the eggs into a bowl. Use a fork to mash them up very well. After that, add five teaspoons of mayonnaise. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix these ingredients well. Allow the egg salad to cool in the refrigerator for thirty minutes. When you are ready to eat, spread the egg salad on bread and enjoy your creation.

Example Paragraph 4 My First Flight Although the first time I flew on a plane was many years ago, I can still remember how afraid I was that day. All my life I had wondered what it would be like to fly in an airplane. Finally, in March of 1972, I boarded my first flight. I flew from New Orleans to Managua, Nicaragua, on SAHSA Airlines. It was a Boeing 727 jet. There were three seats on each side of the aisle. It was sort of crowded, and this only made me nervous. Every time we hit a little turbulence, my hands turned white. I was nervous during the entire flight that I did not eat the meal they gave me. I would not even go to the bathroom. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when the plane finally landed at our destination. Since then, I have been on over one-hundred flights, but I can still remember the small details about my first airplane flight.

What is a paragraph? A paragraph consists of a series of sentences grouped together and having a single purpose.  It describes or explains one idea.  The length of a given paragraph depends on the purpose, the material, and the function of the paragraph.  

Four Features of a Paragraph Topic sentence – Tells what the paragraph is about. It gives your reading a sense of direction.  A topic sentence usually comes at the beginning of a paragraph. It is also the most general sentence in the paragraph because there are not many details in the sentence.  The topic sentence is divided into two parts: the topic which is the word or phrase you are talking about and the controlling idea that limits or controls the topic to just one aspect.  2. Indented – short distance from the margin.

3. All sentences or supporting details are about one single topic 3. All sentences or supporting details are about one single topic. This is called unity or the logical consistency of all the details in the paragraph.  In other words, all the sentences must refer to the main idea or the topic of the paragraph.  Sentences that do not adhere to the rest of the sentences or do not belong in the paragraph are said to be irrelevant.  Irrelevant details, no matter how engaging, take a paragraph in many different directions and destroy unity. Paragraphs should also be coherent. Coherence means that the sentences should be organized in a logical manner and should follow a definite plan of development. 4. Concluding sentence – summarizes, restates, or evaluates the most significant ideas of the paragraph.  It could also predict the condition of your topic in the near future.  Phrases such as: In conclusion, In summary, Concluding, Summarizing are used.

5. The title should:     Be short, simple, and concise.    Not be a sentence. Use no period at the end.  It could have a question mark (?) or an exclamatory mark (!).   Follow correct punctuation rules.  All important words are capitalized except the articles (a, an, the),the coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but), and the prepositions, such as: in,  on, at, for, from, to, by, far, of, with, etc. These will be capitalized if found at the beginning of the title.  5.       Be centered - in the middle.     6.       Not be underlined.