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they appear out of place. [Writer asks So what? and concludes in reference to the paragraph’s opening observation:] It is this sense of displacement—of human beings alienated from the environments they themselves have created—that provides the most haunting aspect of the work of these two photographers. (Jack Gambino, “Demolition Zones: Contemporary Photography by Edward Burtynsky and Camilo Jose Vergara”)

Paragraph Structure #3: Coordinate and Subordinate Paragraphs

Here is a third way of thinking about how paragraphs develop. In his influential essay, “A Generative Rhetoric of the Paragraph,” Francis Christensen defines the topic sentence as “the one the other sentences depend from, the one they develop or amplify, the one they are a comment on” (Notes Toward a New Rhetoric, 1967, page 80). Christensen posits two kinds of paragraphs: coordinate and subordinate. In coordinate structures, all of the sentences following the topic sentence are equal in weight, or as he puts it, “all children of the same mother” (61).

Consider the following example of a (primarily) coordinate paragraph, taken from earlier in this chapter. Most of the sentences relate back to the topic sentence in some way. A number 1 indicates that the sentence is coordinate with the topic sentence, operating on the same level of importance and repeatedly clarifying the topic sentence. The number 2 indicates that the sentence is a subordinate structure, which will be explained below.

[T:] Paragraphs are a relief not just for your readers: they also give the writer a break.

1 When you draft, start a new paragraph whenever you feel yourself getting stuck: it’s the promise of a fresh start.

1 Paragraph breaks are like turning a corner to a new view, even when the thinking is continuous.

1 They also force the writer to make transitions, overt connections among the parts of his or her thinking, and to state or restate key ideas.

1 Paragraph indentations allow readers to scan essays, searching for connecting words and important ideas.

The paragraph above best fits the pattern that Christensen calls coordinate because all of the sentences that come after the topic sentence “develop or amplify” it. Each offers reasons for thinking that paragraphs are a relief not just for readers but also for writers.

In what Christensen identifies as subordinate structures, each sentence clarifies or comments on the one before it, as for example in this short sequence that he cites:

1 The process of learning is essential to our lives.

2 All higher animals seek it deliberately.

3 They are inquisitive and they experiment.

4 An experiment is a sort of harmless trial run…(60).

Note how each sentence generates the one that follows it, rather than primarily relating back to the topic sentence.

Here is another example of a subordinate paragraph to contemplate:

1 Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there’s another executive “I” that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion.

2 Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain.

3 These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along. (Steven Pinker, “The Mystery of Consciousness,” Time, January 19, 2007)

Go back now and look at our first example (above) of a coordinate paragraph—the one about paragraph breaks being a relief. Are there any sentences in that paragraph that we might have classified as subordinate? What about the last sentence, for example? Notice that it clearly refers back to the topic sentence because it explains what paragraph indentations do to help readers. But it is also true that this last sentence evolves out of the sentence that immediately precedes it by developing the idea of transitions (“connecting words” “overt connections”) and restatement