How to Structure a Paragraph in an Academic Essay

Writing an academic essay isn’t exactly the easiest task out there. To come up with a paper that’ll earn an A, you need to research a lot of information, create a strong thesis statement, and follow all of the task requirements. Luckily, the task of writing an academic essay becomes much easier when you know how to structure paragraphs. In fact, paragraphs are building blocks of an academic essay. If you master the skill of structuring paragraphs you’ll be able to:

• clearly communicate your thoughts and ideas to readers
• engage with your audience
• achieve the logical structure of the academic essay
• demonstrate excellent writing skills
• present the results of your research in the best way possible

Here’s an easy-to-follow guideline on how to structure a paragraph in an academic essay.

What is a paragraph?

Surely, visually we determine a paragraph as a component of an academic essay that begins with an indentation. However, in writing a paragraph is defined by three features, including:

• a paragraph begins on a new usually indented line
• consists of one or more sentences
• focuses on one idea or point

From this definition, we can already take some valuable tips on how to structure a paragraph, in particular, make sure that each paragraph focuses on one idea. If you have three ideas to talk about in your academic essay, you’ll have three corresponding body paragraphs. If you know this principle, structuring academic essays becomes a piece of cake.

Another crucial aspect to remember about paragraphs in an academic essay is that the introduction and conclusion are also considered paragraphs, however, they can have a different structure. Here we focus on structuring body paragraphs.

Body Paragraph Structure

The elements of a body paragraph come together like pieces of a puzzle. There are four key elements to any body paragraph in an academic essay:

• Topic sentence
• Evidence
• Explanation
• Transition and/or conclusion

Let’s review each of these academic essay paragraph elements and determine how to develop them.

Topic sentence

As the name suggests, a topic sentence of a body paragraph is a sentence that contains the main idea of the paragraph. It is the first sentence of any body paragraph and the key intention behind having a topic sentence is introducing the content of the paragraph to readers.

The general guideline for writing topic sentences are:

• Don’t make them too long — they only introduce the content
• Avoid writing too broad topic sentences — they should be specific
• Topic sentences should correspond with the main thesis statement of an academic essay

Evidence

An academic essay, same as any other academic paper, is always based on evidence and there’s no way around it. Body paragraphs are where you present your evidence to readers aiming to persuade them of a specific idea, which is reflected in the thesis statement.

Evidence in an academic essay should come from credible sources, such as:

• Academic articles from scholarly journals
• Textbooks
• Websites of government institutions (those with gov domain)
• Websites of international organizations (e.g., IMF, World Bank, and UN)
• Reputable news agencies (e.g., The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, The Washington Post)

Evidence in a body paragraph can be presented in one or two sentences. Make sure to reference your sources to indicate your academic integrity and demonstrate your hard work researching the topic.

Explanation

Your facts don’t speak for themselves. This part of a body paragraph is where you elaborate on how the previously presented evidence supports the topic sentence and, in turn, the thesis statement of the essay. Your task is to:

• be concise
• refer to the evidence in connection with the topic sentence
• explain like your readers have zero knowledge on the topic, but don’t go too far chewing the idea over
• avoid talking in circles, or repeating the same thing using different words without making any progress

Explanations can be lengthier than evidence. You need to provide a coherent and logical explanation, demonstrating your own understanding of the relationship between evidence and topic sentence.

Transition and/or conclusion

This is the grand finale of a body paragraph. You can formulate it as:

• transition between current and next body paragraph
• conclusion of the current paragraph
• combination of both

Transition usually reflects how the current paragraph is connected to the following paragraph in the essay, meaning that it is important to give a hint about what’s about to be revealed further in an essay. Transitions are useful when the ideas in an academic essay are closely connected and intertwined.

Conclusion sentence simply summarizes the content of the body paragraph, letting readers know what they should take from it. Concluding sentences aren’t a must and you can absolutely skip them to avoid repetition of ideas when you write the conclusion of an academic essay.

Combination of transition and conclusion of the paragraph sentence allows you to kill two birds with one stone. There’s no need to jam transition and conclusion in one sentence. Instead, you can write a concluding sentence and then transition sentence.

Effective Paragraph Writing: Pro Tips

Now you know how to write a paragraph in an academic essay. To help you organize your writing process more effectively, here are pro tips to keep in mind:

• Make notes during research. You’ll be able to distinguish key ideas you’ll discuss in an essay, which will later become topic sentences
• Write outlines. This will help you logically structure the essay and especially the train of thought in body paragraphs
• One idea — one body paragraph. This is the golden rule of writing a coherent academic essay
• After writing every paragraph, check back on your thesis statement and make sure that the body paragraph content is fully relevant
• Analyze, don’t just summarize. Even if you have the best evidence that supports your thesis statement, make sure to provide analysis of the facts instead of just summarizing them
• Proofread. When you finish the paper, reread it to make sure that it is easy to follow. Proofreading will also help you identify and correct all grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors.
• Ask someone else to read it. If you’re struggling and feel overwhelmed, just ask someone else to carefully read your essay and let you know if it’s easy to understand and follow
• Paragraphs aren’t created equal, but that’s the goal. There’s no absolute rule, but in academic writing, paragraph length should be consistent. As a guideline, an A4 page should fit 2–3 paragraphs (12-point font, double-spaced). Consistent paragraph size in an academic essay will make your paper look neat and professional as well as demonstrate your ability to organize your thoughts and evidence

As you can see, structuring a paragraph in an academic essay is not difficult to master once you know these shortcuts. Now go on and build your perfect essay, because if you will, you absolutely can!