MAIN IDEAS IN PARAGRAPHS AND ESSAYS
We often talk about a text as having one main idea. But if the text has more than one paragraph, shouldn’t it have as many main ideas as it has paragraphs? Yes and no. Each paragraph should have its own main idea. In fact, that’s the definition of a paragraph: a group of sentences about the same idea. At the same time, however, each paragraph does something more: It works to support the main idea of the entire passage. Thus, there is an overall main idea (often called a theme or thesis) for the text. The main idea of each paragraph should work to support the overall main idea of the entire text.