On Paragraphs
Posted By Iain Coleman on April 24, 2009
I’ve just received the printed copies of my most recent annual report, and flipping through it made me appreciate the importance of paragraphs in this kind of scientific writing.
A 66-page report like this isn’t really designed to be read all the way through like a novel. It’s for dipping in, seeing an interesting picture or an eye-catching heading, grazing on a few morsels of knowledge. In this case, well-structured paragraphs are absolutely critical.
Each paragraph should be as far as possible understandable on its own. It should open with some interesting piece of information that can also stand on its own, and should then develop that thought in more detail. I won’t claim that every paragraph in the whole report lives up to this ideal, but I think enough of them do.
It’s all about how we skim a page. We look for a visual hook - and a paragraph break is a very strong one - then we read the first line-and-a-half or so. If we’re sufficiently interested, we might continue reading: if not, we’ll scan on to another visual break and skim the top of it in the same way.
If your paragraph is well-formed, the reader will get something useful and interesting out of it whether they read it all in context, read it in isolation, or just skim the top. If you have enough paragraphs that work this way, even a long technical report will seem lively and interesting to the casual reader. If you don’t, then all your finely-wrought arguments will congeal like lukewarm porridge into one indigestible lump.
You can have great sentences and great structure - but for scientific reports, the paragraph is king.
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