Sunday, January 5, 2014

Teatime and paragraph visual formatting

The teatime story should be tightly tied to a single event.
If every sentence starts on the left, like here, then the paragraph is formatted wrong.
We want one sentence to start one space after the previous.
This is the "visual" part of paragraphing.

Let's look at one example of a teatime story.

When Pam invited Mitch to sit down for a cup of tea, he happily said "Yes, thank you." His clear brown eyes followed Pam's curly red hair as it bobbed up and down. He could imagine her eyes looking for things even though she could not really see. She reached for a teapot, and easily filled it with water from the sink. She felt for the stove, put the pot on top, and fumbled as she turned on the flame. Yet her hands moved smoothly across the cabinets and counter-top to grab several packages of tea, a jar of honey, and a bowl of sugar. "Oh, I don't have any lemons," she said. "Would you like Japanese Green Tea, Woolong Chinese Tea, or Lipton's Tea?"

124 words, 8 sentences, approximately 15 words per sentence.

(We can continue the story if you like.)

The main point here is that we want "richer" sentences, more adjectives and adverbs. We "color" the message (rather than black and white line drawing, we look for a color photograph). In addition, we connect ideas in sentences, and connect sentences (through the story, or with Connections words like "yet").




 

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