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How Long Should a Paragraph Be?
It is said that once Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and Owen Lovejoy were riding in a coach to Bloomington, Illinois, when a dispute broke out between Douglas and Lovejoy concerning the proper proportion of a man’s legs to his torso.
When asked to weigh in on the ideal length for legs, Lincoln is supposed to have said, “I have not given the matter much consideration, but on first blush I should judge they ought to be long enough to reach from his body to the ground.”
I currently teach English Composition at two community colleges in the Bay Area of California, and it is my opinion that many young people write paragraphs that are too long. Many of them have been given a kind of algorithm to follow in paragraph composition that counsels them to make a point, illustrate the point with an example, and explain the relevance of the illustration.
The algorithm is called P.I.E.: point, illustration, explanation, and it has the virtue of encouraging students to think that their writing should be about something. But it also has at least two concomitant vices: if followed at all consistently, it produces a metronomic monotony of paragraphs that pull like the crew of an eight-person rowing scull toward one and only one goal.
Such a writing style may look purposeful and indicative of an attentive student, but it also…
