Hockey -- Grafs Are Too Big!

In traditional English composition, you learn to just write and write and write, with no regard to how big a paragraph can get.

That is NOT how we write in journalism.

In journalism, grafs are much more bite-sized. And there's a reason for that. Each graf should contain just ONE central point, or ONE supporting fact. It should be easy for a reader to be able to break down the informational subsets you offer, and it should be easy for an editor to be able to skim through your story and identify each idea and piece of evidence broken out into its own paragraph.

In general, that means you should often end up with most paragraphs being no longer than two sentences, and quite often just one sentence long.

Let's look at this:

In a 9-0 vote Tuesday evening, the local school board unanimously decided to ban boys from playing on girls’ sports teams in the district. Effective immediately, boys will be banned from playing on the girls’ field hockey, softball, and volleyball teams. Although the new policy is largely unpopular with many students and parents, the school board stands by its decision, citing the size, speed, and power of male athletes and its potential hazards to female players.

That's just too much, and too long. All the information is mushed in together. It's hard to differentiate key points. But to make the story cleaner and easier to read, all you had to do was hit the "return" key a couple of times, like this:

In a 9-0 vote Tuesday evening, the local school board unanimously decided to ban boys from playing on girls’ sports teams in the district.

Effective immediately, boys will be banned from playing on the girls’ field hockey, softball, and volleyball teams.

Although the new policy is largely unpopular with many students and parents, the school board stands by its decision, citing the size, speed, and power of male athletes and its potential hazards to female players.

Now, key points stand out: what happened (in the first lede graf), the details of how it's being implemented (in the second nut graf) and an explanation of why it's needed in the first place (the third graf). Now do you see what I mean by separating units of thoughts and main points?

Same thing with the relationship between a point and supporting information, like here:

High school Athletic Director Hugh Baker worried that the new ruling will force teams, like the girls field hockey team, to forfeit because of other teams in the league that have boys on them. “Our girls field hockey team would have had to forfeit at least ten of their 18 games last season because we played other schools that had boys on their teams,” Baker said.

Once again, you can divide the point being made in the paraphrase, and the evidence via the quote, like this:

High school Athletic Director Hugh Baker worried that the new ruling will force teams, like the girls field hockey team, to forfeit because of other teams in the league that have boys on them.

“Our girls field hockey team would have had to forfeit at least ten of their 18 games last season because we played other schools that had boys on their teams,” Baker said.

Again, do you see how it clearly differentiates between one unit of information (the point being made via paraphrase) and the supporting evidence for the unit (the quote)?

You may notice in your returned work that I may have peppered your paper with what appears to be a red-ink capital L. That's the copyediting symbol for where you should have ideally started a new paragraph.