Can An Essay Have One Body Paragraph? (Quick Answer)

Have you ever been tempted to make an essay one paragraph but instead stopped to wonder whether it’s the right approach to adapt?

Or maybe you feel like you don’t have many ideas for the topic and you feel like a one-paragraph write up would suffice? You’re not alone.

Like you, there are hundreds of students out there who wonder if they can make their essay one paragraph, regardless of how long it is.

So we’ll answer this question once and for all, so you know how to structure your essay properly and earn the grades you want.

Can an Essay Be One Paragraph? 

You can’t make an essay one paragraph. Your instructor expects you to break the assignment into sections, each with a paragraph that covers an idea more in-depth. Considering the structure of an essay, your outline must have an introduction paragraph, followed by a subsequent series of paragraphs, and end with a conclusion. 

Every subsequent paragraph after the opening sentence starts with a topic sentence, which explains the main subject of the essay.

Then, you proceed to developing the paragraph to make your ideas clear. After, you’ll conclude with a link sentence, which will lead to a different idea, within the topic on to the next subsequent paragraph.

Of course, you could take all your ideas and dump them into one block of text, but that’s already a recipe for disaster.

Doing so not only shows that you don’t appreciate the ultimate guide to writing winning essays but also you’re not being as helpful as you should be.

After all, a big wall of text is hard to read. It signals that your ideas are all over the place, with your thoughts not as highly organized, as they should.

Again, the quality of the paper is highly likely to suffer, and your college professor may not even bother to give the essay a second glance.

How Many Paragraphs Should An Essay Be? 

Let’s get the basics out of the way first:

An essay has three sections: an introduction paragraph, the body section, and the concluding paragraph. 

You cannot skip the introduction or the conclusion, as they introduce the topic and give an overall summary of the subject. So your essay should be at least 5 paragraphs long. 

With the introduction and conclusion paragraph figured out, you have the body section to fiddle with, as there’s no minimum or maximum number of recommended paragraphs to write in this section.

It all depends on the instructions in the essay prompt, the depth of your research, or the magnitude of the topic. 

Simple essay topics tend to be easy to cover, and, in such a case, your instructor may advice you to make it as short as between 350 and 700 words.

Given such a word limit, it’s easy to fall into the temptation that you can have that too many words for one paragraph.

But the thing is that it doesn’t matter if the essay is long or short, you have to stick to the structure (or accepted standards) from start to finish. 

Even an essay as short as 550 words will require three parts. The thesis mist be clear, the body paragraphs must answer the question asked thoroughly, and the conclusion should be on point. And if you can’t have more paragraphs for your essay, at least you must have three.

The Three Parts of an Essay Explained 

Below are the three main part your professor expects to see in any type of essay that they ask you to write:

Introduction Paragraph 

The introduction paragraph is the section where you capture your readers’ attention by telling them what to expect in the essay.

The Main Body Section 

This is the part where you argument your statements and support your claim. It’s here that you use a series of paragraph to explain the key points to help the reader to understand your topic better.

There’s no limit to the number of paragraph to use here. Just exhaust your points and present your ideas in the best way possible. 

The Concluding Paragraph 

It’s important to finish your essay with a concluding paragraph. Your professor will want to see this section to determine if you’ve correctly summarized your argument and highlighted a solution.

Can My Professor Instruct Me to Write an Essay in a Certain Way? 

It’s highly unlikely that your professor will ask you to write a one-paragraph essay, so we rule out that possibility.

Your professor knows the standard structure of an essay, and they’ve taught you to stick to it regardless of the type of essay they ask you to write.

Teaching you a different concept from what’s already accepted in the academic space would be a total disaster.

They may touch on how long they expect the essay to be depending on the complexity of the topic, but they’ll never encourage you to make an essay one paragraph.

After all, your instructor knows that squeezing everything into one paragraph denies you the writing room to write a thorough document that fulfills the requirement of the essay prompt.

Related Reading

• How Long is a Short Essay?
• Can You End an Essay With a Quote?
• What is a Claim in an Essay and How Do You Make One?
• Can You Use Contraction in a College Essay?
• Should You Put a Thesis at the End of an Essay? 

Conclusion 

We’ve been writing essays at Help for Assessment for over 5 years now, and we can tell you with confidence that making an essay one paragraph is a suicide mission. 

Sure, you can write all you want, but you won’t end up with a quality piece of writing.

At the end of the day, one paragraph will never be equal to an essay. It’s just not enough to make a claim and provide sufficient evidence to support your position or argument.

So rather than trying to squeeze everything into a single paragraph and fail terribly at making your ideas fit, break your ideas into several paragraphs to make those ideas clear and well explained.