Early in your academic life, teachers and lecturers may give you both a structure for your essay and a guideline on how long each part of the essay should be.
Ultimately, your essay will be evaluated on the information you present, not on the number of paragraphs in the essay. Essay Content Is More Important Than the Number of Paragraphs Of course, if you have been set a relatively short word limit, you may not be able to go in-depth at all, in which case a paragraph for each of the main sub-topics (psychology, physical development, and cognitive development) will likely be adequate. But if both those who say technology is bad for kids and those who say it can be good have done a great deal of work on the sub-topic, you might want to make that ten paragraphs so that you can cover both sides of the argument and look into how earlier authors reached their conclusions. When you research this topic, you will find that there are contrasting points of view and researchers have identified several physical, developmental, and psychological effects of technology use in children.Īssuming five psychological effects have been identified, you can assume you’ll need to write five paragraphs if you are going to write a relatively in-depth essay. Of course, if there is a lot of information to cover in order to explore each area, you may need more.įor example, if you are writing an essay on childhood development and exposure to technology, you will want to look into the physical, psychological and cognitive developmental effects of tech on kids. It would be safe to assume you need at least one paragraph for each of these.
When you are planning your essay, you will think of or research the main elements that are needed in the body text. A paragraph contains all the ideas that support or explain a single concept. What Points Do You Have to Cover?Īnother, less limiting and more accurate way to work out how many paragraphs you need to cover your topic is to look at the main points you have to cover in the body text. So if you’d like a guesstimate, you can assume that a 1,000-word essay will have between five and ten paragraphs. On average, there are usually 100 to 200 words in a paragraph. In academic work, your paragraphs are likely to be a bit longer than most of the ones you see in this blog post. This is a rule of thumb, which means it won’t always work quite that way, but it’s handy all the same. Guessing How Many Paragraphs Before You Begin Proponents of the five paragraph essay say that the body text should consist of three paragraphs, but in reality, it’s fine to write more or fewer paragraphs in this section. In its simplest form, an essay can consist of three paragraphs with one paragraph being devoted to each section. Next, you will have body text in which you discuss the topic in more detail, and finally, you’ll have a conclusion that tells your reader what you were able to see after looking into the facts or thinking through the topic. First, you’ll introduce your topic to your reader. There are a lot of people who say an essay should be five paragraphs, but it’s an extremely limiting rule, and unless you’ve been instructed to write a five paragraph essay, there’s no reason to stick to it.Īs a rule, you’ll write your essay in three main parts. There is no firm rule that says an essay needs to have a set number of paragraphs, but an essay must be a minimum of three paragraphs.