I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing—the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words. If the moment of quickening is to come, it comes at the level of the paragraph. It is a marvellous and flexible instrument that can be a single word long or run on for pages (one paragraph in Don Robertson’s historical novel Paradise Falls is sixteen pages long; there are paragraphs in Ross Lockridge’s Raintree County which are nearly that). You must learn to use it well if you are to write well. What this means is lots of
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