The work of writing is simply this: untangling the dependencies among the parts of a topic, and presenting those parts in a logical stream that enables the reader to understand you.
Good opening sentences establish the paragraph's central point. For example, the following paragraph features an effective opening sentence:
A loop runs the same block of code multiple times. For example, suppose you wrote a block of code that detected whether an input line ended with a period. To evaluate a million input lines, create a loop that runs a million times.
Is the opening sentence of the following paragraph effective or defective?
The Pythagorean Theorem states that the sum of the squares of both legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. The k-means clustering algorithm relies on the Pythagorean Theorem to measure distances. By contrast, the k-median clustering algorithm relies on the Manhattan Distance.
Remove the extraneous sentence(s) from the following paragraph. Assume that the opening sentence does establish the desired theme for the paragraph:
Spreadsheets provide a great way to organize data. Think of a spreadsheet as a table with rows and columns. Spreadsheets also provide mathematical functions, such as means and standard deviations. Each row holds details about one entity. Each column holds details about a particular parameter. For example, you can create a spreadsheet to organize data about different trees. Each row would represent a different type of tree. Each column would represent a different characteristic, such as the tree's height or the tree's spread.
Practice:
Spreadsheets provide a great way to organize data. Think of a spreadsheet as a table with rows and columns. S
preadsheets also provide mathematical functions, such as means and standard deviations. Each row holds details about one entity. Each column holds details about a particular parameter. For example, you can create a spreadsheet to organize data about different trees.Each row would represent a different type of tree. Each column would represent a different characteristic, such as the tree's height or the tree's spread.