Paragraphing in English Articles: Tips for Non-Anglophone Authors

摘要

A paragraph is a visual textual unit which usually consists of a number of sentences dealing with one main idea. By dividing a text into paragraphs, writers give their readers cues as to how process their texts. In other words, paragraphing performs an organizational function as it structures the meaning of a piece of writing “so that a reader can absorb the text sensibly.”1 The skill of paragraphing is also of great importance for nonnative English authors, of medical texts in particular, as its mastery helps them to clearly express ideas and thus to avoid various forms of plagiarism, often found in the papers of non-Anglophone researchers.2,3