WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Paragraph, Part 2 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.240 Hey you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:09.600 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.559 And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time for an 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.480 episode from the Vault. This one originally published August twenty fifth, 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.480 twenty twenty two, and it is part two of our 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:21.279 series on the paragraph. 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:27.760 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:37.240 of iHeartRadio. Hey you welcome to stuff to Blow your mind. 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:38.840 My name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.160 And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.959 of our series on the paragraph. Yes, the writing convention 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:50.200 the paragraph as used in prose. In the last episode, 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.000 of course, if you haven't heard that yet, you should 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.320 go check that out first. But in the last episode 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:57.680 we especially focused on the history of the paragraph, talking 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:02.640 about the old Greek and Latin manuscripts of Scriptio continua, 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:05.480 which is just a big old mess of letters with 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:10.600 no case differences, no punctuation between sentences, and no spaces 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:14.880 between words. It sounds like an absolute nightmare. And how 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:18.560 over time that morphed into a tradition that put a 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:22.880 greater emphasis on legibility, introducing things like spaces between words 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:27.840 and punctuation case differences and so forth, but eventually also 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.839 having this tradition of transition markers such as the pill crow, 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.280 which are you know, that's the paragraph symbol. You've probably 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.679 seen it before, especially in medieval manuscripts, often being a 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.800 little red symbol. But then of course that over time 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:44.920 just giving way to blank space, giving rise to the 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:48.880 paragraph breaks that we know today now concerning the era 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.160 of medieval manuscripts, where you had these red pill crows 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.560 and they would be filled in by special manuscript artists 0:01:55.680 --> 0:02:00.200 known as rubricators. Again, that's actually from the Latin word 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:03.720 meaning red, so these are the red text people. That 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.600 there was a quote from a Middle English poem that 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.600 I wanted to share because it struck me as so weird. 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:12.720 This poem was cited in an essay that I'm going 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:14.960 to refer to in this episode, and I did in 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:17.720 the last called Past Lives of the Paragraph by Richard 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:22.120 Hughes Gibson, published in The Hedgehog Review. But the poem 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:24.560 goes like this, Okay, so it's in Middle English, I'll 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.760 try it. It's like route is on the book without 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:34.040 v pariffs, great and stout bullet in rose read and 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.840 what's going on here? Is that the poet is using 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:41.640 paraff symbols as a metaphor for the five wounds on 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:45.040 the body of Christ. And in modern English this would 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:47.840 these lines would say something like wrought on the book 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:52.600 without five paraffs, great and stout standing out in rose read. 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.760 So there you go. That's your typography and crucifixion narrative 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.119 coming together in one great, glorious stew. 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:04.639 This is fascinating when it comes to read text. I 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.679 guess the main place one sees it now is that 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:13.760 many bibles, Christian Bibles will contain passages that are the 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:17.799 attributed words of Christ in red, and that's a holdover 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.600 from these days. Another case that stands out in my 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:24.320 memory is the book The House of Leaves, in which 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:29.760 I believe the word minotaur is featured in red. And 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:31.640 that book as a whole, I think is interesting to 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:34.040 think of in terms of something that I keep thinking 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:38.240 of discussing the paragraph, and that is the format being 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:43.160 part of the message, part of the communication that if 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:48.560 you strip away paragraph breaks, it disrupts the communication that 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:54.560 is taking place between between author and reader. And if 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.480 you strip away other aspects of formatting, if you tinker 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.920 with things like fonts in a negative fashion. It can 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:03.360 also have such an effect, and that is a book 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.560 for example, that if you were to alter too much 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.520 about the format at all, you end up decaying the 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:12.840 message and the intended communication of the piece. 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:15.880 This ties into something we talked about in the last episode, 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:20.680 which is the somewhat arbitrary designations of which formatting decisions 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:23.560 are considered integral to the text and which you're not. 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.159 And the big example would be ebooks in the way 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.160 that they break text across different pages. So you change 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.560 the font size on your ebook, the different text will 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.640 appear together with different page groupings. And of course this 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:40.000 was true before e books. I mean, different printings of 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.400 the same text in book form would usually not have 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:47.640 the exact same words each page, so page layout is 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.039 not considered integral, usually in a printed book, though of 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:52.839 course it would be in a book like House of Leaves, 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:54.760 where it's very much a work of art as well 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.120 as a book. And yet paragraph breaks are considered an 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:00.720 integral part of the text, and if you change those around, 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:03.599 people I think would mostly have the sense that you 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.520 are really altering the author's work. There, even though some 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:10.600 teachers do it and apparently it has good effects, especially 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:13.479 when teaching a piece of writing that has really long paragraphs. 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.520 I totally forgot to mention a book that I'm I'm 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.840 currently reading, that I'm that I have that are that 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:21.479 has errors in it. I'm reading an old ebook that 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:25.599 I have of Frank Herbert's Heretics of Doune, and I 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:27.760 hadn't I hadn't picked up this e book in a 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:30.560 very long time, and the formatting was weird in it, 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:34.240 not consistently, not enough to where I was like, should 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:35.720 I just buy a new e book of this? Or 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:40.120 should I press on? But occasionally paragraph breaks would be missing, 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.760 and it would often occur with dialogue, so if I'm 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:46.600 just reading along, I might miss that one character has 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.800 stopped talking and another character has started talking, or that 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.360 there's been some shift in a thought, and it is 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:55.440 it was disruptive to reach those points, and I would 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:57.440 have to stop and go back and sort of pick 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.760 apart with my eyes where the actual paragraph break should 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:04.559 have occurred, and then I would momentarily think about buying 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:06.880 a new ebook, and then I would keep going instead. 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:10.200 Wait, I'm perplexed by the idea of an ebook with 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.279 fixed errors in it. Okay, so you buy a video 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:17.960 game and it's got bugs, the developers should eventually release 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.400 a patch, like an update that'll download, it'll it'll fix 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.000 your game, and now it won't have the bugs anymore. 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:26.840 But you download an ebook and it's got bugs in it, 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:28.000 and what they don't do that? 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:32.720 No, Well nowadays they can. Nowadays ebooks can you can 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:36.240 essentially have a patch that goes out through like Amazon 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:38.279 and whatnot. So I don't know. I guess this is 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:40.480 just a super old ebook that I have of this 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:44.919 particular text. So yeah, I should have I should have 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.360 broken and bought a new ebook of it. I actually 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.760 have a physical copy of it as well, and I 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.359 toyed with just switching over to the physical copy, but 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:56.080 I can't control the size of the text on that, 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.960 so I kind of kind of spoiled by my Kindle. 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:02.520 So this old one, You're like, it would be like 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:04.760 waiting on the developers to release a patch for the 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:06.240 et game for the Atari. 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.880 Yeah, well, like this is clearly not the supported copy anymore, 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:12.720 so or maybe I have something wrong in my settings. 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:13.360 I'm not sure. 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:16.760 Okay, Well, one thing that I guess ties more into 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:19.040 the history that we were talking about in the last 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.800 episode is the question of when did the idea of 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:27.360 a para for a paragraph come to symbolize more the 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:33.280 chunk of text itself between the breaks rather than the breaks, 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.960 because you know, the Originally the idea is that the 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.760 marker known as the paragraphs in Greek manuscripts was like 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:45.040 a marginal notation that signaled some kind of transition within 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:47.960 the text. It was it was written out beside, and 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.000 then over time this morphs through many stages to become 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.080 line breaks and indentation. So when did we start talking 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:59.280 about paragraphs as the text between those breaks. Well, in 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.280 that article I'm in by Richard Hughes Gibson, Gibson points 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:06.120 to examples in texts in French and English around the 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:09.679 thirteenth or fourteenth century that seemed to start making reference 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.720 to paragraphs as sub sections of text, saying things like 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.320 you know, you can skip this paragraph, or talking about 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:19.200 a text and saying, you know, refer to this paragraph. 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.360 But it seems to be roughly around the late seventeenth 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.760 or early eighteenth century that the more modern definition of 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.800 a paragraph as the passage of text between the line 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:34.320 breaks and indentation emerges as dominant, and Gibson points to 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.760 a seventeen o six new edition of The New World 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:42.040 of English Words, which defines a paragraph as quote a 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:46.400 portion of matter, of discourse or treatise contained between two breaks, 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:49.520 i e. Which begins with a new line and ends 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.600 where the line breaks off. So by around that time 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.760 you've got people talking about paragraphs, and they are the 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:58.080 paragraphs that we have today. It's a chunk of texts 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:02.360 between line breaks. But this leads to another question, which 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:08.440 is the question of paragraph theory. What actually makes a paragraph? 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:12.360 Surely people who study language and writing must have come 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:14.640 up with ideas of Okay, you know, you go out 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:17.480 and look at paragraphs and books. What are the things 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.240 that paragraphs have in common? How do authors decide where 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:24.440 to break the line? And this question is not nearly 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.760 as easy to answer as you might assume, especially because 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:30.200 you know this is not the only thing like this 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:32.280 in the world. But it's one case where there's sort 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:36.040 of a formal definition that you will find taught in 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:38.480 school and that you will find in a lot of 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:42.240 textbooks that does not at all seem to describe what 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:46.280 happens just out in the world. And the difference here 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:49.280 is that you've got all kinds of prescriptive definitions of 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:53.439 the paragraph, often saying that a paragraph sort of explores 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.600 a central idea or a topic. And we'll get to 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.760 one major proponent of this idea in just a bit. 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:03.600 But one person that Gibson points to in his essay 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:07.360 is a poet and art critic named Herbert Reid, who 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:10.880 wrote a nineteen twenty eight book on English prose style, 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.400 and Gibson writes about read quote taking up his nearly 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.000 century old book one recognizes a peculiar tradition in which 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:23.200 one textbook after another, one generation after another, has promoted 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:27.560 a blueprint for paragraph construction conspicuously at odds with the 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:32.440 prose of the most highly acclaimed stylists of the English language. So, 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.880 in other words, there's a conflict between how paragraphs are 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:40.120 theorized in textbooks and taught in schools and how they're 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:44.160 actually used by writers, especially the most popular writers in 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:48.480 a culture. Good writers do not usually write comp one 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:53.000 oh one style essays with clear topic sentences and one 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.920 central idea per paragraph. How often do you come across 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:57.959 that in a book you actually like to read? 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:02.520 Yeah? Not often? And you know, in fact, I was 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:05.360 for the last episode and for this episode, I did 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.480 a lot of looking around, thinking, well, I should be 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:09.880 able to find some perfect paragraphs out there in books 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:14.680 that I love and books that I admire. And it's 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:17.040 really hard because if you go into it thinking about 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:22.080 paragraphs and perhaps having at least this shadow of of 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:26.200 this school book, this textbook paragraph in your mind, you 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:28.679 find all sorts of things that don't really fit that form. 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.559 Absolutely. So you look at your favorite books, you are 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.240 probably just not going to find too many paragraphs that 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.840 have a topic sentence and then supporting sentences developing that 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.120 topic idea, and then a line break when you were 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:42.280 done with that topic, moving on to the next thing. 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:44.719 There are some reasons we can talk about where I 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:48.160 think it might make sense for composition classes to teach 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:50.640 it that way, But yeah, this is just not usually 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:52.640 what you're going to find out in the wild in 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.400 the books you like. And so we're back to the 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.319 question again, like what actually causes those paragraph breaks to 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:01.679 happen where they do. They're not random. If you were 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.520 to just rearrange them at random, it would probably produce 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:08.520 a less good and less cohesive text. And yet it's 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.000 very hard to actually come up with rules to explain 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:12.800 why they come in the places they do. 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:18.320 I'll also say that I think that a very effective 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.959 but standard, you know, sort of textbook paragraph is kind 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.120 of like a brick and a cathedral. The bricks are important, 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:27.280 and there are may be a lot of bricks in 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:30.360 there holding things together, but they're not the part you remember. 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.720 You remember the flying buttresses, you remember the gargoyles in 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:37.360 the in the stained glass windows and the and things 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.959 of that nature. And so the parts of a text, 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:43.640 and in fact, the paragraphs of a text, they probably 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.600 stand out the most to us are the ones that 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.000 are weird, that are you know, big run on sentences 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:52.800 or short little fragments that have a lot of weird 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.480 things going on in them, like those are those are 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:57.120 the things that catch our eye. Those are the ones 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:57.720 we remember. 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.679 Yeah, I think that's right. And I think even by 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:04.640 looking at some of the more prescriptive paragraph theorists, even 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:09.640 if their prescriptive definitions of paragraphs don't really describe what 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:13.479 you see in the world, they do make some observations 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:15.720 that are useful. And one thing that's stuck with me 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:19.960 here is that in Gibson's article, he cites an American 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:24.160 lawyer and grammarian named Lindley Murray, who in seventeen ninety 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.600 five wrote a book on English grammar called English Grammar, 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:31.240 which makes some recommendations on how a composition should be 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:35.720 divided into paragraphs, and literally writes that ideally a paragraph 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.640 is about a single subject. Each subject should get its 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:42.760 own paragraph, unless subjects are very short. Subjects that are 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.920 very long should be divided into multiple paragraphs or getting 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.760 into some vagueness about exactly what is very short or 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:51.640 very long here, And who know, people in seventeen ninety 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.559 five might have had more tolerance for very long paragraphs. 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:57.720 I'm not sure about that, but that seems possible based 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.439 on the text I've surveyed. One thing Linley Murray says 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.800 that I do think is still true is that you 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:09.400 should often try to place the paragraph breaks quote at 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.720 sentiments of the most weight or that call for particular attention. 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.319 So when you have to divide subjects across multiple paragraphs, 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:23.000 you are looking for places to place the paragraph breaks 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:27.680 that will call attention to the sentences directly before or after. 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.960 And so it's interesting that Murray senses what Gibson in 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.480 his essay describes as these quote hot spots places in 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.440 the text, typically occurring near paragraph breaks, where the power 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:43.480 of the words increases or is emphasized. Paragraph breaks tend 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.240 to draw attention to the words right before and after them. 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.720 This is a great idea, of course, because as a writer, 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:56.080 you want the reader to keep reading, and this kind 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.480 of works like an arrow pointing from one chunk of 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:03.440 text to the next, almost like connecting one tile in 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:05.920 a board game to the following tile. You know where 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:07.160 to go, and you want to go. 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.240 There, Yes, And I think at this time it's also 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:15.640 already recognized that paragraph length plays an important role, not 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.680 just in organizing the contents of a piece of writing, 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.680 but also in sort of managing the energy and attention 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:27.280 of the reader. Because again, if paragraphs are too short, 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:31.480 the text starts to feel frivolous or insubstantial, and if 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.880 paragraphs are too long, the text starts to feel tedious 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:39.160 and overtaxing. And so balancing paragraph length serves the function 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:48.240 of not losing the reader. But okay, it's time to 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:52.840 talk about Alexander Bain, because when you get into paragraph theory, 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:55.800 this is a name that is cited, and essentially every 0:15:56.200 --> 0:16:00.040 piece of writing on this subject Alexander Baine is the 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:04.160 King of paragraph theory. So he was a professor in 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:07.320 the nineteenth century in Scotland. He was he was the 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:11.600 chair of Logic and the chair of English Literature at 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:13.920 the University of Aberdeen. I think he was given those 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:19.480 posts in eighteen sixty one and he he was one 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:21.040 of those people at the time who just had like 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:23.000 a poker and a number of different fires. So I 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:27.840 think he was also influential in the early development of psychology, yeah, 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:32.480 but also logic and also English literature. So he became 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:36.080 a teacher of composition at Aberdeen and ended up writing 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.080 his own text book for his classes that was called 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.760 English Composition in Rhetoric am Manuel. This was published in 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.080 the eighteen sixties. It contained what a scholar called Paul 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:51.640 Rogers called the first systematic formulation of paragraph theory. And 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.800 if you ever took a comp one oh one class, 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:58.920 you will probably recognize Bain's idea. Bain's primary concern with 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:03.480 paragraphs was unity, that each paragraph should have what's called 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.920 unity of purpose. It's doing one main thing. And he 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:11.800 had like six rules about paragraphs. They are things like, 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.320 first rule, the bearing of each sentence upon what procedes 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:20.320 shall be explicit and unmistakable. Two, when several consecutive sentences 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.320 iterate or illustrate the same idea, they should, so far 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:27.240 as possible, be formed alike. And then three, here's the 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:31.399 big one. The opening sentence, unless so constructed as to 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:35.679 be obviously preparatory, is expected to indicate with prominence the 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:39.000 subject of the paragraph. And here it is this is 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.760 your topic sentence rule number three. So, for Alexander Bain, 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:46.240 each paragraph in a composition should exhaust a single subject, 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:50.160 and the paragraph should begin with a succinct statement of 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:52.679 that subject, which is then to be developed in the 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.199 following sentences. Don't you just thrill with the love of 0:17:56.240 --> 0:18:01.000 the English language. But Bain's ideas did prove very influential, and, 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.919 according to Gibson, at least one half of the modern 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:10.800 discourse on paragraph theory still basically derives from Bain. Gibson writes, 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:14.600 citing another rhetorician named Mike Duncan, that there are two 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:17.960 major schools of thought in paragraph theory. You got prescriptivists 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:23.680 and descriptivists. Paragraph prescriptivists usually say something like the paragraph 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:27.200 is an ideal structure with an ideal form it's based 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.639 on unity of purpose. Like Bain said, it should be 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.720 about one thing, and it should cover that one thing, 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.400 and that form, that ideal form can be emulated by 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:43.200 students to practice their writing. Meanwhile, paragraph descriptivists would have 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:47.440 what Gibson calls quote a looser inductive approach to instruction, 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:51.800 with Bain style rules limited to suggesting a structural ideal 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:55.919 that is only rarely seen and thinking about it. I 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:58.960 can see how there are advantages to teaching writing with 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:03.520 each of the approaches. So the descriptive school, to my mind, 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:07.160 saying yeah, paragraphs don't usually work that way is more honest. 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.680 It is more honest about how paragraphs are actually formed 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:14.240 in popular writing, but it's also a lot harder to teach. 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:16.320 I mean, if the truth is that a paragraph can 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.719 be anything you want it to be as long as 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.520 it works, as long as it makes sense and feels 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:25.359 good to the reader, that is a true statement. But 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.560 a student probably doesn't know how to create a paragraph 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:31.560 that works unless they're just naturally talented. So this is 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:36.159 just not very helpful advice. So incomes the prescriptive model. 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.600 It doesn't usually describe most of the paragraphs you'll find 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:43.520 in books you like and articles you like. But it 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.639 is actually something that can be taught and has a 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:49.960 utility in creating a structure that students can use to 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:53.639 organize their thoughts and make them clear. So it is 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.560 better than nothing. It is better than not being able 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.119 to write anything coherent at all. But then again, if 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:03.600 you learn composition on the basis of the prescriptivist thought 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:08.320 and you're writing Alexander Bain style paragraphs with topic sentences, 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:12.359 the classic five paragraph essay for a school class, I 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:15.800 wonder does that constrict the development of your writing skill 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:18.480 in the domain of organic paragraphs. 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:20.920 Yeah, I don't know. It certainly makes me think of 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:24.080 the old standard that you need to learn the rules 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:27.760 before you break the rules you need. It's better to 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:32.400 start with this rule based system and then move out 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.880 from that so you'll have, you know, somewhere to go 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:39.639 and somewhere to sort of look back to. So I 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:44.359 can see the I certainly see the appeal of valuing 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:46.160 both approaches to the paragraph. 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:48.879 Yeah, I think I can agree with that, and I 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:50.520 guess I was sort of already getting at this. But 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:52.560 to make it more clear, I wonder if this is 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:56.239 just one of those things that is a product of 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:00.840 necessity stemming from the realities of teaching. Like there's no 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.600 systematic way to teach a student to be a great 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.480 prose stylist, to just you know, to write great organic 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.760 paragraphs that people love to read. Like, what would you 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.240 tell them to do? It's no use this word here, 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.480 and you know, like you probably just can't really teach 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:19.840 that unless you're gonna stick with them their entire life 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:24.439 and just be really intensive. But you probably can, in 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:27.480 the course of a semester, help teach a student to 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.320 better organize their thoughts more clearly with a structure like 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:35.320 the five paragraph essay that has paragraphs with topic sentences 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:38.040 that are each about a single subject. So I think 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:42.720 taking a student from incoherent in writing to reasonably clear 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:47.520 five paragraph essay with Bain style conventions, that's doable. Teaching 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:52.040 someone to write wonderful organic paragraphs is much more challenging. 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:55.440 Yeah, And this is something that's going to be a 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:57.679 no brainer to any teachers out there, and certainly to 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.200 any parents of children who are are still learning how 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.840 to write. I mean, I've my son's been doing pretty well, 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:07.040 but but I mean I've seen some real dogs of 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:11.280 paragraphs when it comes to to putting things together, because 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:13.800 you know, I have to remind myself. I've had to 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.480 remind myself in these times. It's like, yeah, he he 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:19.199 may he reads a lot and he's he gets to 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:22.760 see a lot of well constructed paragraphs and paragraphs that 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:25.520 are definitely doing their job within narrative works and so forth. 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.920 But you've got to start somewhere. You've got to have 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:31.760 like some sort of basic form in mind, especially when 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:35.160 you're doing these very you know, wrote sort of assignments 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:39.960 where it's all about constructing, stretching the sentences, forming those 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:42.639 sentences into paragraphs, and having you know, X number of 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:45.320 paragraphs to illustrate a basic concept. 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.160 Yes, and in the defense of the five paragraph essay 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:51.720 and and the Alexander Baynes style paragraph, uh, I would 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:55.000 say that's useful for more than just producing a piece 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:57.679 of writing somebody would actually want to read. It is 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:01.719 useful for practicing organizing your own thoughts. I know I've 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:04.919 said on the podcast before that I often feel like 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:08.320 I don't really understand what I think about an issue 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:10.879 often until I try to write about it. Writing is 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:15.000 the process by which I realize which of my intuitions 0:23:15.080 --> 0:23:17.760 I do think are true and make sense, and which 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:21.600 ones are not and I should just abandon It's writing 0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:24.360