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[2] [3] One of the most famous opening lines, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times", starts a sentence of 118 words [4] that draws the reader in by its contradiction; the first sentence of the novel, Yes even contains 477 words. Moby-Dick's "Call me Ishmael." is an example of a short opening sentence.
The first paragraph should define or identify the topic with a neutral point of view, but without being too specific. It should establish the context in which the topic is being considered by supplying the set of circumstances or facts that surround it. If appropriate, it should give the location and time.
In writing and editorial practice, authors and editors use the pilcrow glyph to indicate the start of separate paragraphs, and to identify a new paragraph within a long block of text without paragraph indentions, as in the book An Essay on Typography (1931), by Eric Gill. [2]
This keeps the left and top margins of the paragraph flush. In modern computer browsers, this may be achieved with a combination of HTML and CSS by using the float: left; setting. An alternate CSS-only method can instead use the :first-letter pseudo-element. An example of this format is the following paragraph:
Sections usually consist of paragraphs of running prose, each dealing with a particular point or idea. Single-sentence paragraphs can inhibit the flow of the text; by the same token, long paragraphs become hard to read. Between paragraphs—as between sections—there should be only a single blank line. First lines are not indented.
The last line of a paragraph continuing on to a new page (highlighted yellow) is a widow (sometimes called an orphan). In typesetting, widows and orphans are single lines of text from a paragraph that dangle at either the beginning or end of a block of text, or form a very short final line at the end of a paragraph. [1]
In expository writing, a topic sentence is a sentence that summarizes the main idea of a paragraph. [1] [2] It is usually the first sentence in a paragraph. Also known as a topic sentence should encapsulate or organize a entire paragraph. Although topic sentences may appear anywhere in a paragraph, in academic essays they often appear at the ...
Articles start with a lead section (WP:CREATELEAD) summarising the most important points of the topic.The lead section is the first part of the article; it comes above the first header, and may contain a lead image which is representative of the topic, and/or an infobox that provides a few key facts, often statistical, such as dates and measurements.