ABSTRACT
When people define paragraphs, they may think first of appearance. A paragraph is sometimes thought of as merely a visual unit, that is, a way to ‘clump’ information to make a document more attractive. They may consider the paragraph's length, as this has changed over the years, from ones over a page long in nineteenth-century fiction to the present practice of shorter paragraphs. Certainly the authors can pick out paragraphs by their appearance. The important point, however, is that effective writers create paragraphs not on a visual basis but on the basis of function. They structure information to meet the needs of their readers by signalling the topic and its development. Effective paragraphs are complete, that is, they provide as much information as the reader needs or expects.
