Introduction

At every level of an academic essay—the sentence, the paragraph, the entire sequence of paragraphs—the development of your ideas has to be carefully orchestrated. Every part of your argument should be structured so that it unfolds in a logical, coherent manner, even as the essay is constantly incorporating new material. The tutorials in this series will help you structure your writing with paragraphs unified by topic sentences and linked together with bridge sentences. Selected paragraph exercises follow the tutorials on essay structure, as do handouts on how to map the idea structure of an essay and how to revise a completed essay draft.

Paragraphs: Unity

Paragraphs: Bridge Sentences