• A narrative paragraph tells a story, presenting events in the order that they happened.
• A descriptive paragraph tells what a person, a place, or thing, or an idea is like.
• An expository paragraph gives directions or explains information.
• A persuasive paragraph presents reasons, arguments, and opinions to win over the reader to a certain point of view.

 Good writers organize paragraphs so that readers can easily understand them.  Common ways to organize paragraphs are: time order, location order, order of importance, cause-effect order, and comparison-contrast order. 

• Time order paragraphs tell the events in the order in which they happened.

From America Will Be

By the late 1700s, some Quakers spoke out against slavery.  In the late 1700s, some leaders of the American Revolution argued that slavery did not belong in a nation where “all men are created equal.”  By the 1830s, more and more Americans believed that slavery should end.  These people were called abolitionists.

• Location order paragraphs describe a place.  They may describe things from moving from top to bottom, from left to right, or in a circle.

from Danny the Champion of the World by Ronald Dahl

The filling station itself had only two pumps.  There was a wooden shed behind the pumps that served as an office.  There was nothing in the office except and old table and a cash register to put money into.

• Order of importance paragraphs begin with the least important idea and move towards the most important idea.

from Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman

While the North was free soil, it was hardly a paradise for blacks.  Racial prejudice was a fact of everyday life.  Most Yankee states had enacted strict “black laws.”  In Illinois, Lincoln’s home state, blacks paid taxes but could not vote, hold political office, serve on juries, testify in court, or attend schools.  They had a hard time finding jobs.  Often they sold themselves as “indentures” for a period of twenty years – a form of voluntary slavery – just to eat and have a place to live.