Body paragraphing (for comparative essays)

Coherence is created when ideas appear to meld, following each other logically and seamlessly.  A lot of the coherence that you achieve in your P2 essay will be from linking ideas between paragraphs,but also within paragraphs. Here we show how you might structure internally.

A single paragraph may look like this:

1. The first sentence needs to tell the reader as clearly and in as few words as possible what the focus of the paragraph is going to be. Make sure that it directly addresses the question. If your essay is very well structured then you should be able to summarise it by reading the first sentence of each paragraph. The first sentence is vital in signposting what the paragraph is going to be about. Some teachers call this the topic sentence: others refer to it as the point.

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2. The second sentence should include your first piece of evidence. This will usually be a quotation from one of the texts. The rule of thumb for quotations is that they should be as short as possible: you should quote only the sections that you intend to discuss and, in an essay like this, they should never be longer than a couple of lines of poetry or a prose sentence. They should also be embedded – the sentence should read naturally and flow continuously if you were to take the quotation marks away.

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3. The next part of the paragraph will usually be two or three sentences of analysis of the first quotation. In these sentences you should write about the writer's diction, structure and form. You will need to quote certain words again in order to focus on them and to show how and why the writer has used them. You should use technical language in your analysis to show that you understand how and why the writer uses various literary devices.

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4. You will need to link into the next section of the paragraph which will often be a comparison with another text. This will usually be one sentence and will often use a linking word of phrase. Some examples of these are similarly, nevertheless, In keeping with this idea of X...etc

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5. You now need to provide some evidence from the text you are comparing, so you will normally include another quotation here. Follow the advice given in point 2 above.

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6. Once again you will analyse the quotation, following the advice in point 3 above. In this section of the paragraph you may draw the two texts together and write about the similarities and differences between the two pieces of evidence you have selected.

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7. It may be appropriate to end the paragraph with a sentence which brings the reader back to the point of focus set out in the first sentence. However, if you have stuck to the point of the paragraph and focused on answering the question throughout, this may not be necessary.