WEBVTT - The Paragraph, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.680 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:17.520 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.280 we're back with part two of our series on the paragraph. Yes, 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:26.360 the writing convention the paragraph as used in prose. In 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:29.080 the last episode, of course, if you haven't heard that yet, 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:30.760 you should go check that out first. But in the 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.760 last episode we especially focused on the history of the paragraph, 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.440 talking about the old Greek and Latin manuscript style of 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:41.640 script EO continue ah, which is just a big old 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:46.600 mess of letters with no case differences, no punctuation between sentences, 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:51.199 and no spaces between words. It sounds like an absolute nightmare. 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:54.920 And how over time that morphed into a tradition that 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:59.400 put a greater emphasis on legibility, introducing things like spaces 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.960 between war words and punctuation case differences and so forth, um, 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.959 but eventually also having this tradition of transition markers such 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.160 as the pill crow, which are you know that that's 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.319 the paragraph symbol. You've probably seen it before, especially in 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:17.959 medieval manuscripts, often being a little red symbol. But then 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:21.280 of course that over time just giving way to blank space, 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.440 giving rise to the paragraph breaks that we know today 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:28.160 now concerning the era of medieval manuscripts, where you had 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.280 these red pill crows and they would be filled in 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:35.400 by special manuscript artists known as rubric caters. Again that's 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.640 uh actually from the Latin word meaning red. So these 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:42.480 are the red text people, uh that they um there. 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:45.039 There was a quote from a Middle English poem that 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.040 I wanted to share because it struck me as so weird. 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:50.160 This poem was cited in an essay that I'm going 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.400 to refer to in this episode, and I did in 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.200 the last called Past Lives of the Paragraph by Richard 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.560 Hughes Gibson published in The Hedgehog Review. But the poem 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.000 goes like this, Okay, so it's in Middle English, I'll 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.800 try it. It's like route is on the book without 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:11.560 v pariff's great and stout bullet in rose red. And 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.239 what's going on here is that the poet is using 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.959 pair off symbols as a metaphor for the five wounds 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:22.200 on the body of Christ. And in modern English this 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.000 would these lines would say something like wrought on the 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:29.240 book without five paraffs, great and stout standing out in 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.880 rose red so there you go. That's your typography and 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:38.360 crucifixion narrative coming together in in one great glorious stew this. 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:42.120 This is fascinating when it comes to red text. I 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:45.160 guess the main place one sees it now is that 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:50.680 many bibles, uh, Christian Bibles will contain um passages that 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:54.320 are the attributed words of Christ in red and uh 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:56.880 and that's a hold over from these days. Another case 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.920 that stands out in my memory is the book The 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:03.760 House of Leaves, in which I believe the word minotaur 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:08.120 is is featured in red. And that book as a whole, 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.000 I think is interesting to think of in terms of 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:13.080 something that I keep thinking of discussing the paragraph, and 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:17.679 that is the format being part of the message, part 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.040 of the communication. Um that if you if you strip 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:26.640 away paragraph breaks yet disrupts the communication that is that 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:31.760 is taking place between between author and reader. And and 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:34.440 if you strip away other aspects of formatting, if you 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:38.160 tinker with things like fonts in a in a negative fashion, uh, 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:40.440 it can also have such an effect. And that is 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.520 a book for example, that if you were to alter 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.160 too much about the format at all, you end up 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:50.320 decaying the message and the intended communication of the piece. 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.360 This ties into something we talked about in the last episode, 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:57.520 which is the somewhat arbitrary designations of like which formatting 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:01.920 decisions are considered integral to the text and which you're not. Uh. 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.320 And the the big example would be e books in 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.160 the way that they break text across different pages. So 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.360 you change the font size on your e book that 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:14.480 you know different text will appear together with different page groupings. Uh. 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:16.400 And of course this was true before the books. I mean, 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.200 different printings of the same text in book form would 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:23.120 usually not have the exact same words each page, so 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.240 page layout is not considered integral usually in a printed book, 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:29.599 though of course it would be in a book like 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:31.520 House of Leaves, where it's very much a work of 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.159 art as well as a book. Uh. And yet paragraph 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:36.840 breaks are considered an integral part of the text, and 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.360 if you change those around, people I think would mostly 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:42.760 have the sense that you are really altering the author's 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:46.080 work there, even though some teachers do it and uh 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.080 apparently it has good effects, especially when teaching a piece 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.240 of writing that has really long paragraphs. I totally forgot 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:55.039 to mention a book that I'm I'm currently reading that. 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:56.880 I'm that I have that our head that has errors 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.080 in it. I'm reading an old e book that I 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:03.440 have of Rank Herbert's Heretics of Dune, and I hadn't 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:05.520 I hadn't picked up this e book in a very 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.720 long time, and the formatting was weird in it, uh, 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.719 not consistently, not enough to where I was like, should 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:13.200 I just buy a new e book of this? Or 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:17.120 should I press on? But occasionally, uh, paragraph breaks would 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:20.840 be missing, and it would often occur with dialogue. So um, 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:23.400 if I'm just reading along, I might miss that one 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.680 character has stopped talking and another character has started talking, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:29.400 or that there's been some shift in a thought and 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.560 it is it was disruptive to reach those points, and 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:34.360 I would have to stop and go back and sort 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:38.040 of pick apart with my my eyes where the actual 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:41.320 paragraph breaks should have occurred. And then I would momentarily 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:43.240 think about buying a new e book, and then I 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.560 would keep going instead. Wait, I'm perplexed by the idea 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.679 of an e book with fixed errors in it. Okay, 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.440 so you buy a video game and it's gotten bugs. 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.960 The developers should eventually release a patch like an update 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.960 that will download. It'll it'll fix your game, and now 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.680 it won't have the bugs anymore. But you download an 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:04.760 e book and it's got bugs in it, and what 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:08.200 they don't do that? No, Well nowadays they can. Nowadays 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:11.800 the books can you can essentially have a patch that 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.160 goes out through like Amazon and whatnot. So I don't know. 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:17.200 I guess this is just a super old e book 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.839 that I have of this particular UH text. So, um, yeah, 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.560 I I should have. I should have broken and bought 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:26.120 a new e book of it. I actually have a 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.680 physical copy of it as well, and I toyed with 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.880 just switching over to the physical copy, but I can't 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:34.720 control the size of the text on that, so I 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.960 kind of kind of spoiled by my kindle. So this 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:40.479 old one, You're like, it would be like waiting on 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:42.960 the developers to release a patch for the et game 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:45.480 for the Atari. Yeah, well, like this is clearly not 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.360 the supported copy anymore, so, or maybe I have something 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.039 wrong in my settings. I'm not sure. Okay. Well, one 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.320 thing that I guess ties more into the history that 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:57.960 we were talking about in the last episode, UH is 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.080 the question of when did the idea of a paraph 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:05.680 for a paragraph come to symbolize more the chunk of 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:11.520 text itself between the breaks rather than the breaks, because 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:14.440 you know the the Originally, the idea is that the 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.080 marker known as the paragraph as in Greek manuscripts, was 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:22.160 like a marginal notation that signaled some kind of transition 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.320 within the text. It was it was written out beside uh. 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.040 And then over time this morphs through many stages to 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:32.120 become line breaks and indentation. Uh So when did we 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.960 start talking about paragraphs as the text between those breaks? 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:38.760 Well in that article I mentioned by Richard Teughs Gibson, 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.600 Gibson points to examples in texts in UH in French 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:46.040 and English around the thirteenth through fourteenth century that seemed 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:50.000 to start making reference to paragraphs as subsections of text, 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:53.000 saying things like you know, you can skip this paragraph, 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:55.240 or talking about a text and saying, you know, refer 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.640 to this paragraph. But it seems to be roughly around 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:02.560 the late seventeen early eighteenth century that the more modern 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.800 definition of a paragraph as the passage of text between 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:10.360 the line breaks and indentation emerges as dominant. UH. And 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.200 Gibson points to a seventeen oh six new edition of 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:18.680 the New World of English words, which defines a paragraph 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.120 as quote a portion of matter of discourse or treatise 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.760 contained between two breaks, i e. Which begins with a 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.040 new line and ends where the line breaks off. So 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.560 by around that time you've got people talking about paragraphs, 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:34.720 and they are the paragraphs that we have today. It's 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:38.360 a chunk of text between line breaks. But this leads 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:42.840 to another question, which is the question of paragraph theory. 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:48.280 What actually makes a paragraph? Surely people who study language 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:51.160 and writing must have come up with ideas of Okay, 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:53.840 you know, you go out and look at paragraphs and books. 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:57.080 What are the things that paragraphs have in common? How 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:00.600 do authors decide where to break the line? And this 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:03.079 question is not nearly as easy to answer as you 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.840 might assume, especially because, uh, you know, this is not 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:08.640 the only thing like this in the world. But it's 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.120 one case where there's sort of a formal definition that 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.160 you will find taught in school and that you will 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:18.040 find in a lot of textbooks that does not at 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:22.680 all seem to describe what happens just out in the world. Uh. 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:24.400 And and the difference here is that you've got all 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:28.520 kinds of prescriptive definitions of the paragraph, often saying that 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:32.880 a paragraph sort of explores a central idea or a topic. 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:36.080 And we'll get to one major proponent of this idea 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:40.120 in just a bit. But one person that Gibson points 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:42.760 to in his essay is a poet and art critic 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:47.400 named Herbert Reid, who wrote a nineteen book on English 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:52.280 prose style, and Gibson writes about read quote taking up 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.000 his nearly century old book one recognizes a peculiar tradition 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.600 in which one textbook after another, one generation after another, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:04.680 has promoted a blueprint for paragraph construction conspicuously at odds 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.920 with the prose of the most highly acclaimed stylists of 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:11.760 the English language. So, in other words, there's a conflict 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:16.000 between how paragraphs are theorized in textbooks and taught in 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:20.079 schools and how they're actually used by writers, especially the 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.800 most popular writers in a culture. Good writers do not 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:28.480 usually write comp one oh one style essays with clear 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.560 topic sentences and one central idea per paragraph. How often 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:34.720 do you come across that in a book you actually 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:39.680 like to read? Yeah? Not often, you know. In fact, 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.600 I was for the last episode, and for this episode, 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:44.320 I did a lot of looking around, thinking, well that 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:46.760 I should be able to find some perfect paragraphs out 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.480 there in books that I that I love and books 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.960 that I admire, and it's it's it's really hard because 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:56.160 if you go into it thinking about paragraphs and perhaps 0:10:56.200 --> 0:11:00.440 having at least this shadow of the of this school book, 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.280 this textbook paragraph in your mind, you find all sorts 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:07.240 of things that don't really fit that form. Absolutely. So 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:09.560 you look at your favorite books, you are probably just 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:12.040 not going to find too many paragraphs that have a 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:16.120 topic sentence and then supporting sentences developing that topic idea, 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.520 and then a line break when you're done with that topic, 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:21.120 moving on to the next thing. There are some reasons 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:23.000 we can talk about where I think it might make 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:27.200 sense for composition classes to teach it that way, But yeah, 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:29.079 this is just not usually what you're gonna find out 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:31.520 in the wild and in the books you like. And 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:34.679 so we're back to the question again, like what actually 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.800 causes those paragraph breaks to happen where they do. They're 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.559 not random. If you were to just rearrange them at random, 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:45.160 it would probably produce a less good and less cohesive text. 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:47.320 And yet it's very hard to actually come up with 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.360 rules to explain why they come in the places they do. 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:55.800 I'll also say that I think that a very effective 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.400 but standard, you know, sort of textbook paragraph is kind 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:03.000 of like a brick and a cathedral. Um. The bricks 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:04.720 are important, and there may be a lot of bricks, 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.160 and they're holding things together, but they're not the part 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:11.000 you remember. You remember the flying buttresses, you remember the gargoyles, 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.280 and the and the stained glass windows and the uh 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.720 and and things of that nature. And so the parts 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:20.400 of a text, and in fact, the paragraphs of a text, 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.040 they probably stand out the most to us are the 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.400 ones that are weird, that are you know, big run 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.280 roll on sentences, are short, little fragments that have a 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:32.280 lot of weird things going on in them, Like those 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:34.199 are those are the things that catch our eye. Those 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:36.560 are the ones we remember. Yeah, I think that's right. 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:38.800 And uh. And I think even by looking at some 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:44.160 of the more prescriptive paragraph theorists, even if their prescriptive 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.640 definitions of paragraphs don't really describe what you see in 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:51.800 the world, um, they do make some observations that are useful. 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:54.400 And one thing that's stuck with me here is that 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.600 in Gibson's article, he cites an American lawyer and grammarian 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:02.800 named Lindley Murray, who in seventeen wrote a book on 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:07.040 English grammar called English Grammar, which makes some recommendations on 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:11.200 how a composition should be divided into paragraphs, and literally 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.360 writes that ideally a paragraph is about a single subject. 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:17.920 Each subject should get its own paragraph, unless subjects are 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:21.240 very short. Uh. Subjects that are very long should be 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.520 divided into multiple paragraphs or getting into some some vagueness 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:26.920 about exactly what is very short or very long here, 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:30.000 And who knows. People in seventeen might have had more 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.160 tolerance for very long paragraphs. I'm not not not sure 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.679 about that, but that seems possible based on the text 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:39.120 sive surveyed. But one thing Linley Murray says that I 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:43.040 do think is still true is that you should often 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:47.800 try to place the paragraph breaks quote at sentiments of 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:52.199 the most weight or that call for particular attention. So 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:56.200 when you have to divide subjects across multiple paragraphs, you 0:13:56.280 --> 0:14:00.480 are looking for places to to place the paragraph breaks 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:06.160 that will call attention to the sentences directly before or after. Uh. 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.280 And so it's interesting that Murray senses what what Gibson 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:12.840 in his essay describes as these quote hot spots places 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.480 in the text, typically occurring near paragraph breaks, where the 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.680 power of the words increases or is emphasized. Paragraph breaks 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.920 tend to draw attention to the words right before and 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:26.760 after them. This is a great idea, of course, because 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.920 as a as a writer, you want the reader to 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:34.360 keep reading and and this this kind of works like 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.360 like an arrow pointing from one chunk of text to 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:41.040 the next, almost like uh, connecting one tile in a 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:43.640 board game to the following tile. You know where to go, 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.240 and you want to go there, yes, And I think 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:51.720 at this time it's also already recognized that paragraph length 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:55.920 plays an important role, not just in organizing the contents 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.160 of a piece of writing, but also in sort of 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:03.200 managing energy and attention of the reader. Because again, if 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:07.160 paragraphs are too short, the text starts to feel frivolous 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:10.880 or insubstantial, and if paragraphs are too long, the text 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:14.840 starts to feel tedious and over taxing, and so balancing 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.160 paragraph length serves the function of not losing the reader 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:27.440 than But okay, it's time to talk about Alexander Bain, 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.680 because when you get into paragraph theory, this is a 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:34.480 name that is cited and essentially every piece of writing 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:39.320 on this subject. Alexander Bain is the king of paragraph theory. 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:42.240 So he was. He was a professor in the nineteenth 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:45.080 century in Scotland. He was the He was the chair 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:49.120 of Logic and the chair of English Literature at the 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:51.680 University of Aberdeen. I think he was given those posts 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:56.040 in eighteen sixty one, and uh he was. He had 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:57.840 a He was one of those people at the time 0:15:57.880 --> 0:15:59.480 who just had like a poker and a number of 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:01.880 different fire So I think he was also influential in 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:06.280 the early development of psychology. Uh yeah, but also logic 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:10.480 and also English literature. So um. He became a teacher 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:13.920 of composition at Aberdeen and ended up writing his own 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.760 text book for his classes that was called English Composition 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.320 and Rhetoric, a manual. This was published in the eighteen sixties. 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:24.760 It contained what a scholar called Paul Rogers called the 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:30.200 first systematic formulation of paragraph theory. And if you you 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:32.880 ever took a comp one oh one class, you will 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:38.560 probably recognize Bain's idea. Bain's primary concern with paragraphs was unity, 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:42.400 that each paragraph should have what's called unity of purpose. 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:46.320 It's doing one main thing. And he had like six 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:50.360 rules about paragraphs. They are things like first rule, the 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.840 bearing of each sentence upon what proceeds shall be explicit 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:58.880 and unmistakable. Too, when several consecutive sentences iterate or illustrate 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:01.800 the same idea, they go, so far as possible be 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:06.119 formed alike. And then three, here's the big one. The 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:10.720 opening sentence, unless so constructed as to be obviously preparatory, 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:15.159 is expected to indicate with prominence the subject of the paragraph. 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:17.880 And here it is, this is your topic sentence rule 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.399 number three. So, for Alexander Bain, each paragraph in a 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:25.359 composition should exhaust a single subject, and the paragraph should 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:28.919 begin with a succinct statement of that subject, which is 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:31.960 then to be developed in the following sentences. Don't you 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.680 just thrill with the love of the English language. But 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:40.040 Bain's ideas did prove very influential, and, according to Gibson, 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.560 at least one half of the modern discourse on paragraph 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:49.399 theory still basically derives from Bain. Gibson writes, citing another 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.760 rhetorician named Mike Duncan, that there are two major schools 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.680 of thought in paragraph theory. You've got prescriptivists and descriptivists. 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:01.520 Paragraph prescriptivists usually say something like, the paragraph is an 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:05.280 ideal structure with an ideal form. It's based on unity 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:07.880 of purpose. Like Bain said, it should be about one 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.680 thing and it should cover that one thing and then uh, 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:14.840 and that form, that ideal form can be emulated by 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:20.600 students to practice their writing. Meanwhile, paragraph descriptivists would have 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:24.960 what Gibson calls quote a looser inductive approach to instruction, 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:29.240 with Bain style rules limited to suggesting a structural ideal 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:33.359 that is only rarely seen and thinking about it. I 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:36.719 can see how there are advantages to teaching writing with 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:40.399 with each of these approaches. Uh. So the descriptive school, 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:42.840 to my mind, saying yeah, paragraphs don't usually work that 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.320 way is more honest. It is more honest about how 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:50.320 paragraphs are actually formed in popular writing, but it's also 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.560 a lot harder to teach. I mean, if the truth 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:55.119 is that a paragraph can be anything you want it 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:57.320 to be as long as it works, as long as 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.880 it makes sense and feels good to the reader, that 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.280 is a true statement. But a student probably doesn't know 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.240 how to create a paragraph that works unless they're just 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:10.640 naturally talented, So this is just not very helpful advice. 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:15.680 So incomes the prescriptive model. It doesn't usually describe most 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:18.520 of the paragraphs you'll find in books you like, and 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:21.920 and and articles you like, but it is actually something 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:25.280 that can be taught and has the utility in creating 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.920 a structure that students can use to organize their thoughts 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.920 and make them clear. So it is better than nothing. 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.800 It is better than not being able to write anything 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:38.719 coherent at all. But then again, if you learn composition 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:41.920 on the basis of the prescriptivist thought, and you're you're 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.400 writing Alexander Bain style paragraphs with topic sentences, the classic 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:50.159 five paragraph essay for for a school class, I wonder 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.480 does that constrict the development of your writing skill in 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.199 the domain of organic paragraphs. Yeah, I don't know, And 0:19:57.280 --> 0:19:59.760 it certainly makes me think of of the old standard 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:02.320 that you need to learn the rules before you break 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:06.080 the rules that you need to It's better to start 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:10.320 with this rule based system and then move out from that. 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:13.800 Uh So you'll have, you know, somewhere to go and 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:17.040 somewhere to sort of look back to. Um. So I 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.000 can see the I certainly see the appeal of of 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.160 of valuing both approaches to the paragraph. Yeah, I think 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:26.720 I can agree with that, and I guess I was 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:28.359 sort of already getting at this, But to make it 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:30.560 more clear, I wonder if this is just one of 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:35.640 those things that is a product of necessity stemming from 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:40.119 the realities of teaching, Like there's no systematic way to 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.719 teach a student to be a great prose stylist, to just, 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.440 you know, to write great organic paragraphs that people love 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:49.879 to read. Like, what would you tell them to do 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.639 is like, no, use this word here, And you know, 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.520 like you probably just can't really teach that unless you're 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.520 gonna stick with them their entire life and just be 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:02.399 really intensive. But you probably can, in the course of 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:06.320 a semester help teach a student to better organize their 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:09.760 thoughts more clearly with a structure like the five paragraph 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:13.280 essay that has paragraphs with topic sentences that are each 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:16.600 about a single subject. So I think taking a student 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:21.399 from incoherent in writing to reasonably clear five paragraph essay 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:25.760 with Baines style conventions, that's doable. Teaching someone to write 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:32.000 wonderful organic paragraphs is much more challenging. Yeah, And this 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:33.720 is something that's gonna be a no brainer to any 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.120 teachers out there, and certainly to any parents of children 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:40.280 who are still learning how to write. I mean, I've 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:43.159 my sons are doing pretty well, but um but, I 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:46.040 mean I've seen some real dogs of paragraphs when it 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:48.919 comes to, uh, to putting things together, because you know, 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:51.560 he I have to remind myself. I've had to remind 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:53.760 myself in the in these times it's like, yeah, he 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:56.280 he may he he reads a lot and he's he 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.639 gets to see a lot of of well constructed paragraphs 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:01.440 and para apps that are definitely doing their job within 0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:05.760 narrative works and so forth. But you've got to start somewhere. 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:08.000 You've got to have like some sort of basic form 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:11.040 in mind, especially when you're doing these very um, you know, 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:15.200 wrote sort of assignments where it's all about constructing, uh, 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:19.240 stracting the sentences, forming those sentences into paragraphs, and having 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:23.360 you know, X number of paragraphs to illustrate a basic concept. Yes, 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:25.880 and in the defense of the five paragraph essay and 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:29.360 and the Alexander Baines style paragraph, uh, I would say 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:32.600 that's useful for more than just producing a piece of 0:22:32.600 --> 0:22:35.640 writing somebody would actually want to read. It is useful 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:39.440 for practicing organizing your own thoughts. I know, I've said 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:42.520 on the podcast before that I often feel like I 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:46.000 don't really understand what I think about an issue, often 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:48.480 until I try to write about it. Writing is the 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:52.639 process by which I realize which of my intuitions I 0:22:52.720 --> 0:22:55.520 do think are true and make sense, and which ones 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:59.040 are not and I should just abandon It's a Writing 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:01.760 for me is very much a process of figuring out 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.040