You’ve finally gotten your ideas and research down in writing. Sure, your draft isn’t the prettiest piece of polished writing you’ve ever seen, but remember, you’ve conquered the toughest part: getting your topic on paper. The next few steps go quickly because you can work with a concrete piece of writing.
Now it’s time to take the writing that makes sense to you and fashion it to make sense to others: your readers. The revising step marks a shift in your writing process. You shift your concern from producing your ideas to communicating those ideas to others. In a sense, you shift from being author-centered to being reader-centered.
In this chapter you’ll look at how to make your writing understandable to readers through wellconstructed paragraphs. You will learn to scan your draft for related ideas, develop topic sentences, create unity with transitions, and watch paragraph length. In short, you’ll learn how to write effective paragraphs.