The body is the longest part of your essay – it’s where you make your arguments,
explain your ideas, and give your evidence.
Here’s how to write the body section using strong paragraphs, stay tuned!
Hi, I'm Jessica from Scribbr, here to help you achieve your academic goals.
Before you start writing the main body of your essay, you need two things: a thesis
statement, and an outline of your essay’s structure.
Here’s the thesis statement for our example essay about Braille, which appears in our
introduction paragraph: As the first writing system designed for blind
people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool.
It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of
blindness.
And the outline sketches out the main ideas you’ll cover.
It helps you organize your thoughts and plan the order of information.
We also have a video on how to create your essay outline, if you haven't watched it yet,
it's here!
Now it’s time to start writing!
An essay’s body is split up into paragraphs, and you should tackle it one paragraph at
a time.
Each paragraph should be: Unified: all the sentences relate to 1 central
idea Coherent: the sentences are logically organized
and connected Relevant: the paragraph is clearly related
to the essay’s thesis The content and structure of a paragraph varies,
but these three points are universal to all paragraphs.
To write a strong paragraph, the first step is to identify its purpose.
What point are you going to make in this paragraph?
Let’s work on an example from our essay about Braille.
In the first body paragraph, we want to describe the situation for blind people before Braille’s
invention.
So we start by drafting a sentence that clearly introduces the paragraph’s focus.
This is called a topic sentence.
Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in
nineteenth-century Europe.
You can also use topic sentences to make clear transitions between paragraphs and link your
ideas together.
You’ll learn more about writing great topic sentences in our next video in this playlist,
but first let’s build the rest of our paragraph!
Next, you’ll expand on your topic sentence with evidence and explanation.
There are many different ways to give evidence in an essay:
Cite relevant statistics or scientific studies Quote or paraphrase from sources (e.g. books,
articles or documentaries) Describe real-life examples or case studies
Provide your own data (e.g. from interviews or observations)
In our example, we give evidence by paraphrasing from relevant sources:
While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely
viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable
of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009).
You should also give your own interpretation or explanation of the evidence.
How does it relate to your argument and add to your point?
Here, we explain how this evidence tells us something about the importance of text to
social status: This demonstrates the importance of reading
and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered
impossible to fully participate in society.
In any given paragraph, you might give just one central piece of evidence that you analyze
in detail, or you might give several pieces of evidence and show how they fit together.
Most importantly, everything in the paragraph must clearly relate to the idea you introduced
in the topic sentence.
Finally, wrap up the paragraph by returning to your main point and showing the overall
consequences of the evidence you have explored.
Our paragraph ends by summing up the consequences of this situation for blind people.
It also leads us into the next paragraph, which will focus on the education system.
Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted
people for information and education.
Now, this is just one paragraph!
Keep building your body section, starting each paragraph with a topic sentence.
Speaking of which, our next video is on writing clear topic sentences, see you there then!