Jawaban:

Paragraphs should have both coherence and unity. A paragraph with unity develops a

single idea thoroughly and links it to the rest of the paper. Paragraph coherence is

achieved when sentences are ordered in a logical manner and when clear transitions link

sentences.

Paragraph unity:

Develop a paragraph around a major idea. Express this idea in the topic sentence.

Make the relationship between the main idea of the paragraph and the thesis of the

paper clear. Don’t assume that the reader will “get it.” Spell it out for him/her.

Support the main idea of the paragraph with details.

Create separate paragraphs for those details that explore your topic from different

perspectives.

Eliminate sentences that do not support the main idea. Alternately, you may

revise the main idea to include those sentences.

Look at the following examples from a paper that has the thesis: “Despite the amount of

foreign aid pouring in, social conditions in Zeeland remain bleak because the aid is used

for military purposes.”

Example 1 (without unity)

Robert Bee wrote, “The Zeeland massacre illustrates the need for greater control and

vigilance.” This is related to the thesis. Some 20,000 people disappeared from the

villages. Financial mishandling can lead to great misfortune. Corruption in the

government was exposed repeatedly to no avail. A police force, under orders to

eliminate suspected terrorists, grabbed political dissidents and their families.

Example 2 (unified)

The pogrom of May 3, 1987 exemplifies how foreign aid funds were appropriated

for repressive rather than social development purposes. On that day, some 20,000

people were abducted from villages in the countryside, charged as traitors and

summarily executed. Then governor-for-life Zeely Zeelafsun had recently used $5

billion in aid to create a standing paramilitary police force. Without some restrictive

control over the aid, human rights organizations were unable to prevent the buildup

and unleashing of this disaster. Robert Bee, the director of the Development as

Freedom Foundation wrote, “The Zeeland massacre illustrates the need for greater

control and vigilance.”

In the first paragraph it is hard to tell what the topic sentence is, let alone how all the

sentences belong together. The reader is not informed who Robert Bee is. The words

“related to” in the second sentence don’t give the reader any sense of what the

relationship is. The second paragraph provides a tight topic sentence that links the main

idea of the paragraph to the central argument of the paper. It eliminates det