Words per Paragraph

     Although most of the research on grammar has been limited exclusively to the sentence level, it has always seemed to me that a good writer controls other things, such as thesis, topic sentences, paragraphs, etc., and that there may be correlations between syntactic ability and these other things. Analysis, of course, requires thought and time, but because I am making my original samples available on the net, it made sense to me to maintain their original paragraph structure. I have also included a count of the number of paragraphs, the average number of words per paragraph, and the average number of main clauses per paragraph. If anyone is interested in working on it, it might be interesting to see how this data correlates with the syntactic.

Main Clauses per Paragraph

     Because I am primarily an instructor of writing, I am aware of the problems that teachers have in teaching paragraph structure. One of the things that teachers often suggest is that a new paragraph should be started when the writer moves to a new "idea." I have problems with this for the simple reason that I do not know what an "idea" is. As I point out to my students, teachers also tell them that a main clause is a "complete thought." I then ask for an explanation, in terms of "thought," between "the red house" and "The house is red." I am met with silence. I also note that I cannot see any difference between a "complete thought" and an " idea." If there is no difference, then, because a "complete thought" equals an "idea," the teachers who have told them the preceding are, in effect, telling students that every paragraph should be one sentence long. Obviously, this is wrong.
     Some teachers tell students that paragraphs should be six to eight, or sometimes they say eight to ten sentences long. As the research on this web site indicates, such instruction also creates problems. The average sentence length of some students is ten words; that of others is twenty-four. As a result, some students would write paragraphs that are, on average, a hundred words long, whereas others would write paragraphs that average 240 words. Because paragraphing is intended to help the reader (not the writer), this will not do.
     Words and main clauses per paragraph were not a focus of the Spring 95 project when I started it, but in posting the documents to this site, I have added these counts. I have not calculated averages for the groups, but a cursory examination of the individual samples reflects the fact that whatever they were taught in high school did not sink in. The "Pre-Writing" passages were written within the first week of the course, before any instruction had been given. As the numbers (and texts) indicate, the students ranged from less than two main clauses per paragraph, to over sixteen. Relatively few writers developed paragraphs that would reflect what they were supposedly taught. This is, I would suggest, another area desperately in need of additional research.