Writing a Good Paragraph

What is a paragraph?

A paragraph can be defined as a basic unit of organization in writing. In a paragraph, a group of related sentences will develop into one main idea. It can be as short as one sentence or as long as ten sentences. In this case, the number of sentence is unimportant; nevertheless, basically a paragraph should be long enough to express the main idea clearly.


Three Parts of a Paragraph

In writing a paragraph, it should be beared in mind that a paragraph has three major structural parts, namely: a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.
The topic sentence states the main idea of the paragraph.Not only determining the topic of the paragraph, it also scopes the topic which will be discussed in the space of one paragraph.

Example:

Blogging activity is very famous in the world because of its advantages.

the phrase Blogging activity in the example acts as the topic, while the phrase its advantages acts as the controlling idea. It means that, the topic is controlled by that sentence for scoping the discussion in the paragraph.

P. S: To be a reminder; it is necessary to consider the characteristic of topic sentence, namely: not too general and not too specific.

Second is the supporting sentences. These sentences develop the topic sentence in which they explain the sentence by giving reasons, examples, facts, statistics, and quotations.

The last part a of a paragraph is concluding sentence. This part signals the end of the paragraph and gives the reader such important point to remember. Practically, this part usually refers back to the topic sentence.

Two Additional Elements

Beside those three structural parts, a good paragraph also has the elements of unity and coherence.
Unity means that the paragraph discusses only one main idea. The main idea is stated in the topic sentence and the supporting sentences develop about that idea. For example, if you want to write about the advantages of blogging, discuss only about it. Do not discuss anything else, such as the disadvantages.
Furthermore, Coherence means that the paragraph is easy to read and understand because of two things, namely: (1) the supporting sentences is in some kind of logical order, in which every supporting sentences is discussed one after another , (2) every ideas in the paragraph is connected using appropriate transition signals which means that the relationship between the ideas is clearly shown to the readers. For example: "first of all", "furthermore", "for example", "in conclusion", etc. For the explanation about this transition signals, will be discussed later, in the next article.

In summary, whether or not those elements consists in a paragraph, will determine the paragraph is a well-written paragraph or not. Therefore, practice to add all of those elements to your writing.
Good luck!