The UVic Writer's Guide


Paragraphs That Show Results


This paragraph shows the opposite side of the coin from "causes." The topic sentence of this paragraph will provide a starting point for a series of results which comprise the rest of the paragraph:

The cold, the dark, and the intense radioactivity, together lasting for months, represent a severe assault on our civilization and our species. Civil and sanitary services would be wiped out. Medical facilities, drugs, the most rudimentary means for relieving the vast human suffering, would be unavailable. Any but the most elaborate shelters would be useless, quite apart from the question of what good it would be to emerge a few months later. Synthetics burned in the destruction of the cities would produce a wide variety of toxic gases, including carbon monoxide, cyanides, dioxins and furans. After the dust and soot settled out, the solar ultraviolet flux would be much larger than its present value. Immunity to disease would decline. Epidemics and pandemics would be rampant, especially after the billion or so unburied bodies began to thaw. Moreover, the combined influence of these severe and simultaneous stresses on life are likely to produce even more adverse consequences--biologists call them synergisms††that we are not yet wise enough to foresee.


Topics About Paragraphs
Table of Contents
Start Over
Index

Copyright, The Department of English, University of Victoria, 1995
This page updated May 12, 1995