Unified Paragraphs

Your goal is to create a unified paragraph. A unified paragraph is one that is on topic and has sentences that are clearly connected.

You will know your paragraph is unified if:

• all the sentences in the paragraph belong there. Remember that a paragraph is about one subject. If a sentence is not about that subject, delete it.
• your main idea is clearly stated. You want your reader to know exactly what you are writing about.
• all your ideas support your main idea. Delete or change ideas that contradict, repeat unnecessarily, or do not relate to your main idea. Ideas that do not relate are called irrelevant.
• all your ideas are clear. If anything seems confusing to you, it will be confusing to your reader. Figure out what makes it confusing, and fix it.
• your ideas are clearly connected. If one idea seems to jump to the next, with no clear connection, you can add a word or phrase that shows how it relates to the idea that precedes or follows it.