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Finding Paragraphs

You know how easy it is to go on and on when you have something important to say to one of your friends: “Guess what I did? . . .” Well, the same thing can happen when you are writing. You may start out writing a simple paragraph and end up filling a whole page or two with great ideas without any paragraph breaks.

Keeping Your Ideas Together

When your writing goes on and on, be sure to organize it into paragraphs before you share it. Otherwise, your readers may have trouble following your ideas. The guidelines below will help you find the paragraphs in your writing.

Label . . . Name . . . Find

To find the paragraphs in longer pieces of writing, keep repeating these three steps—label, name, find—until you come to the end of your work.

1. Label the first word in your paper with a paragraph sign (¶).
2. Name the first main idea in your writing.
3. Find the first sentence that is not about this idea.