Research
A group of sentences developing one idea, usually opening with a topic sentence and connecting smoothly to the next.
Merriam-Webster: “a subdivision of a written composition that consists of one or more sentences, deals with one point or gives the words of one speaker, and begins on a new usually indented line”. The dictionary’s own definition carries the rule this entry teaches — one point per paragraph. The etymology is a small history of writing: from Greek paragraphos, a line written alongside to mark a change of speaker in dialogue, from paragraphein, to write alongside. First recorded in the fifteenth century.
Merriam-Webster is cited as the dictionary of record: where an entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it. How the term is used in research writing, above, is this lexicon’s own reading.
From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).
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Developed by Amit Jain at allfrontierglobal.com · purposed.in · purposed · purposed2 · merchcomp.com · uuka.org
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