How to Write a Coherent Paragraph About Anything

Grüße, Paper Interventionists!

Yes, that's right, I speak German, at least better than Lady Gaga does (no offense meant to Her Gagaship, whom I adore).

Anyway, speaking of languages, I thought I'd offer a very brief crash course on how to write a coherent paragraph about anything. Granted, in the US, many academic-dishonesty horror stories come courtesy of ESL students in over their heads and driven to desperate measures (just like I must have been, to write that mixed-metaphor!).

However, in my (albeit limited) experience, the worst cases of I Can't Write a Coherent Sentence come from native speakers of English. (NB: A similar phenomenon comes courtesy of the anti-Spanish/whatever other language people might speak movement in the US, where I've seen more times than I can count the directive "YOUR IN AMERICA SPEAK ENGLISH." As my far-better half says, "You know, maybe English isn't for you. You should try another language and see if you speak it better." ANYWAY. I don't want to lose the Xenophobic demographic here--I'm all for your linguistic xenophobia as long as you yourself know the difference between your and you're.)

At any rate, the following holds true for you if you are:

1. a native speaker of English who doesn't like to write, or never got taught how because your school spent 12 years preparing you for standardized tests and instilling a blood-deep hatred of the written word;
2. an intermediate ESL speaker whose written work needs some help;
3. a paper-writer who enjoys learning time-saving techniques that work for all papers, ever, regardless of subject matter.

In a classic college paper, there are basically four types of sentence you should be writing:

1. The sentence that introduces an idea, author or problem, we'll call it I: "In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gabsty, the figure of the optometrist is highly complex and deserving of a close reading."
2. The sentence that works with or around your data (or "evidence"), we'll call it E: "When Gatsby tells Daisy to 'Move, b*tch, get out of the way,' Fitzgerald has revealed his character's gift for both misogyny and time-travel." (Oh, by the way, all sample insights re: The Great Gabsty are flagrantly made up).
3. The sentence (group) that does a "maybe, but"--(presents and debunks an antithesis); we'll call it an  M: "Scholars such as Draco Malfoy have argued that Fitzgerald's portrayal of automobiles paints him as an anti-car Marxist. However, a closer look at how Gatsby depicts the automobile will prove that this is not the case."
4. The sentence that sums sh*t up; we'll call it an S: "From a closer look at the preceding passage, Gatsby's stark opposition to the hippopotamus becomes clear, as does Fitzgerald's portrayal of hippopotami as anti-Modernist villains."

Every paragraph should be a careful mix of these sentences, one that pays special attention to the placement and ratio. 

Here are some good placements/ratios: 

1. For a short (<5 page) paper, do IMEES. That is a classic five-sentence paragraph that should fill up one-half to 3/4 of a page, contains one introductory idea, ONE maybe-but to start things off, two pieces of evidence (one small, one larger is the best method), and ONE summing-sh*t-up. 
2. For a longer paper, a good pattern is IMEMEES, or even IMMEEES, where you give dissenting voices a bit more authoritah, and thus give yourself more time to argue with them and take up space.

"That's great," you might be thinking, or, if you were born after 1994 (the year I graduated from high school!), "lolz gr8ballz," you might be "thinking." 

And yet you might also wonder: "How do I MAKE these sentences sound right? When I close my eyes and mix up all the jargon I've ever heard and then open them and right-click on MSWord Thesaurus a few times, it never turns out like I want it to." I hate it when that happens. Look, I'm not going to lie, learning to write a really good, beautiful, elegant English sentence takes work. But, the good news is that 99% of perfectly-serviceable college and high-school essays (B+ range, we'll say) are not written in really good, beautiful, elegant English sentences. They are written in a way that is sufficiently coherent, and that is really all you have to do. I can't teach you how in 2 minutes like I'd like to, but I can offer you some tips that I guarantee will work better than closing your eyes and using MSWord Thesaurus:

1. For a good I sentence, first ask your prof or teacher if you may use the first-person in your paper. 99% of them will tell you not to, and that is a shame, because a lot of the best professional scholarship (and mine, for what it's worth) uses the first-person. On the off-chance that you are in my class and I say "go for it!", write your I sentence in the first person and put yourself into it. Use a template like this one: "In the following paper I will argue [SOME INTERESTING THING] about the [book/novel/data X by Y]." If you're not in my class and your prof hates the first-person pronoun, don't despair. A good introductory sentence only needs to have the following qualities: CLARITY, SHORT-TASTICNESS, SPECIFICITY. Make it short, clear and about something specific, and you're golden. "F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby might not seem like a book about optometrists and hippopotami, but the following paper will argue that it is." Boom. Breaking it down even more, for those of you who like mathesque things: [Author + "'s" + Title of Primary Source] + [interesting verb like "demonstrates" or "proves" or "evokes"--look up a list of about 15 good academicy verbs that basically mean "says" or "means" or "is" and alternate using them] + [interesting idea, see Hail-Mary Pass Tutorial].
2. For a good E sentence, always remember that if you are quoting something four lines or longer, you have to offset it--that means indent it about 1/2" on each side, and put a page number in parentheses after it. If you are quoting something shorter, you can just put it in quote marks, but it has to be made into a part of the language around it. When in doubt (when you suspect you've done a Quote Dump), read your E sentence aloud to yourself. Would someone NOT reading along understand it? The best way to do this is to insert a verb ending in "ing," a comma or colon (for more emphasis if you want it), and then your quote. For example: "Gatsby's fear of hippopotami becomes most evocative after he comes home from his first big hippo-party, saying, 'Man, do I hate hippos. They scare the everloving crap out of me' (Fitzgerald 56)." You can also do the -ing trick for an offset quote, but you always have to use a colon in that case.
3. An M sentence(s) should always go "maybe-but" as quickly as it can. It should look like this: ["Maybe" phrase: "it may seem as if," "popular scholarly opinion seems to agree that," "although this appears to be..."] + [period or semicolon] + ["But" phrase: "However, this is not actually the case."]
4. A good S sentence briefly refers to what you were just talking about OR just uses the word "thus" or "therefore," and then goes on to reaffirm a point you are trying to make: "Therefore, we can now see more effectively how deeply-held Gastby's fear of hippopotami is."

If you are not a natural writer, your best bet is to think of yourself as filling out a template. DO NOT OUTLINE (takes too long! ruins the creative impulse!); instead, just begin each paragraph with a blueprint: IMES, IES, IEES, IMMES (that was a blueprint for a 5-page paper, btw, feel free to use it, it's a good one!).

Well, it's Memorial Day weekend here in America--that means that most of you are thinking about BBQing stuff and getting your best all-white ensembles back from the dry-cleaners (they will go GREAT with that spray-tan, of course), and not about writing papers. But it's my hope that for those of you on the quarter system who will be blowing off writing a paper in favor of barbecue-consumption and white-wearing, this might help you when timing is suddenly and unforgivingly of the essence.