Posted by PeterMcC on 02/17/06 16:58

David Graham wrote in
<Cd%If.46041$Rw6.5104@newsfe7-gui.ntli.net>

> "David Dorward" <dorward@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:dt00vt$dn$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk...
>> David Graham wrote:
>>
>>> I know it is very bad to have text in a page not contained by
> something -
>>> so text within a div usually goes inside a paragraph. Does text
>>> withing a table cell also need to be housed in a paragraph?
>>
>> Probably not, although some tabular data consists, at least in part,
>> of paragraphs.
>>
>>> Infact, with the exception of headings and lists and other less
>>> used ones like cite, does text usually find itself wrapped up in
>>> paragraph tags.
>>
>> No. Only text that is a paragraph should be marked up as such.
>>
>> --
>> David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/>
>> <http://dorward.me.uk/> Home is where the
>> ~/.bashrc is
> Hi
> So text consisting of just 3 or 4 words should not be marked as a
> paragraph? Basically, what constitutes a paragraph - my CSE English
> grade 2 is letting me down a bit!

The paragraph is stylistic rather than grammatical.

There has been a move towards shorter paragraphs in English over the last
one hundred years. Shorter paragraphs are particularly prevalent in
marketing/advertising copy - they are hoping to catch the casual reader by
making the text less demanding - providing a resting place for the eye on
white space between the paras and reducing the copy to bite-sized portions.
Since web pages are often working along similar lines, their paragraphs are
also usually shorter than in normal print such as is found in a novel.

Paragraphs are often defined as one or more sentences that are connected by
their dealing with a particular aspect of their subject matter. This doesn't
really define their length though, since there's still an arbitrary decision
to be made about how large or small the sub-divisions of the subject matter
are to be.

To find a quick example, I looked at the lead story ("PM: Guantanamo is an
anomaly" - just chance, no politics intended) in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

The sentences per paragraph count on the first 10 pares is:
1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1

It is sometimes said that it is ungrammatical to have a single sentence
paragraph. That isn't true and it is quite possible to have a single word
paragraph.

Cheers!

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

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