Paragraph

How to spell paragraph

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce paragraph

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does paragraph mean?

1. nounA distinct section of a piece of writing, usually dealing with one idea and beginning on a new line.
2. verbTo divide or arrange written text into paragraphs.

Paragraph in a sentence

• noun

  The opening paragraph of the report summarised the main findings.

• verb

  The editor asked her to paragraph the long block of text more clearly.

• noun

  She revised the final paragraph until it read clearly.

• verb

  Learning to paragraph a document properly improves its readability.

Where does paragraph come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek paragraphos, which literally meant 'something written beside'. It combined para, meaning 'beside' or 'alongside', with graphein, meaning 'to write'. In the ancient world the paragraphos was not a block of text at all but a short stroke or mark drawn in the margin to flag a break or a change of speaker. English picked the word up in the fifteenth century, by way of Late Latin paragraphus and Old French paragraphe, and the meaning gradually shifted from the marginal sign to the chunk of writing that the sign set apart. The same graphein root powers a whole family of familiar words such as 'photograph', 'graphic' and 'autograph', and recalling that 'graph' always means 'write' helps anchor the second half of the spelling.

How the word is built

• para- (beside)
• graph (write/mark); from Greek paragraphos, a mark written beside the text