The Secret Handshake for Writing Great Paragraphs in Academia1

Each paragraph should be like a leaf, and many leaves make up a tree. This tree is your

paper (get it, because paper is made from trees ). Always remember L.E.A.F. each

time you write a paragraph, please use the lines below to fill in more detailed

definitions of each section:

L is for Lead In..

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E is for Example..

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A is for Analysis

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F is for Final Words..

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Here is an example of how this can pattern can work. Try to identify each piece:

The orcs are here characterized with watery words in order to bring to the fore the tension

in the Great War and Ring War, between a forgetting or loss of nature as home, and the

emergence of nature as uncanny bringer of death. Tolkien narrates, The enemy before them

seemed to have grown rather than diminished, and still more were pressing up from the valley

through the breach. . . . Many were cast down in ruin, but many more replaced them (535). This

1 Stolen from my friend and fellow URI Writing Instructor, Ryan Engley.
is a representation of a deindividuated and endlessly multiplying force. In this depiction we find

a residue of the fright and incomprehensibility of the use of attrition in total war, like all literary

responses to World War I.

Now you try:

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