Aug 11, 2025, 6:06 PM@pluralistic I have suspected for a long time that five-paragraph essays were a bad idea, on the basis that I've never been asked to write one anytime in my academic career beyond high school. Glad to see the confirmation in your writing today. https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/11/five-paragraph-essay/
@blp @pluralistic True story: In high school English I once wrote a SIX paragraph essay (because it felt natural to put a paragraph break within one of the arguments? don't remember) and the feedback I got from the classmate assigned to review it was that it had "too many paragraphs" (I seldom got writing feedback of any substance from my classmates.)...
@tiikerikani @blp This was totally the case with my kid's 5PEs. I would review her homework and make editorial suggestions to clean up the readability and sharpen her points, and she'd insist that making those edits would cost her points. One time I refused to believe it, so she made the edits, and sure enough, lost points.
@blp @pluralistic Something just clicked for me. The only good writing I did before college was two creative writing projects. I could never fit my thoughts into a five paragraph essay, nor 500 words(the other constrant on many of these essays ). If not constrained, i'll usually go for 1200-3000 words and many paragraphs. That is why I did so crappy in English class.