Page 98

Building Paragraphs and Essays

Sometimes not all of your ideas about a topic will fit in one paragraph. When this happens, you can write an essay. While a paragraph is made up of a series of sentences, an essay is made up of a series of paragraphs.

Both paragraphs and essays include three main parts, a beginning, a middle, and an ending. The graphic below shows how the parts fit together.

Note The beginning of a paragraph starts with a topic sentence. This sentence tells what the paragraph will be about. The beginning paragraph of an essay ends with a focus or thesis statement. This sentence tells what the essay will be about.