This document discusses four main types of paragraphs: descriptive, narrative, expository, and persuasive. Descriptive paragraphs appeal to the senses to describe people, places, and things. Narrative paragraphs tell a story through a chronological sequence of events. Expository paragraphs provide information on a topic through various organizational structures like cause/effect or comparison. Persuasive paragraphs aim to convince the reader of an idea or argument through the use of a thesis, arguments, and conclusions. Understanding these paragraph structures is important for effectively communicating messages and intentions to readers.

1. Types of Paragraphs
Sebastian Lopez Ramos
Universidad EAN
Noviembre de 2014

2. Introduction
When writing texts, is important to know what will be the
intentionality of the message that we want to share with the readers,
depending of that, this message can be(or cannot be) understood by
them the way we want. So, it becomes crucial to know about the
different kinds of structures that we can write in order to use the
best one in the development of our texts. There are four types of
these structures, they can be used in paragraphs as we will see, or in
a whole text, depending of our needs. These types are descriptive,
expositive, narrative and persuasive(as well-known as
argumentative).

3. Descriptive Paragraph
This kind of paragraph is used to describe
objects and persons. It appeals to the
reader’s five senses. Depending of the type
of description, they can be divided on:
-Prosopography
-Cartoon
-Portrait
-Self-portrait
-Cartoon
-Cronography
-Topography

4. ❏ Prosopography: description based on physical features of people
❏ Cartoon: deformed description based on highlights features(mostly defects)
❏ Portrait: this one includes physic and moral features
❏ Self-portrait: this is a author’s self description
❏ Cronography: A certain epoch or period of time is described
❏ Topography: Description of landscapes and geography

5. Narrative Paragraph
This type of paragraph
represents actions told
in a secuncial or
chronological way. It’s
mainly use to tell
stories.

6. Every narrative paragraph at least 1 of 5 main
points:
❏ Initial equilibrium state
❏ Complication: some element breaks the
equilibrium
❏ Development
❏ Solution: another breaking element that restores
the things again.
❏ A new equilibrium

7. Expository Paragraph
The expositive
paragraph is used to
give the reader some
sort of information
about a special or
specific topic.

8. This kind of paragraph can be divided by the
organization of information, in these:
❏ Analysis/Sintesis
❏ Problem/solution
❏ Descriptive enumeration
❏ Cause/effect
❏ Temporal secuence
❏ Comparison by contrast

9. Persuasive Paragraph
We use this type of
paragraph when we
want to convince the
reader with an idea or
an argument
(affirmative, neutral or
negative)

10. This kind of paragraph is used when:
❏ We use a thesis in our texts
❏ We use arguments in our texts
❏ We came with conclusions in our texts

11. Conclusion
As we could see with these types of paragraphs,
there are different forms to express ourselves
through texts, depending our intention, we can give
a message to our reader. We have the freedom to
choose the meaning of the words that we will use,
but with this freedom comes a responsibility of
using the right structure if we want to share
something new with our reader(s).