Anthony Oliver-Smith is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Florida. He is also affiliated with the Center for Latin American Studies and the School of Natural Resources and Environment at that institution. He has held the Greenleaf Chair of Latin American Studies at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University(2008) and the Munich Re Foundation Chair on Social Vulnerability at the United Nations University Institute on Environment and Human Security in Bonn, Germany(2007). He has been awarded the Bronislaw Malinowski Award of the Society for Applied Anthropology for 2013 for his lifetime achievement and work in disaster studies and resettlement research. He has done anthropological research and consultation on issues relating to disasters and involuntary resettlement in Peru, Honduras, India, Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, Japan, and the United States. He has served on the executive boards of the National Association of Practicing Anthropologists and the Society for Applied Anthropology and on the Social Sciences Committee of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. He is also a member of La Red de Estudios Sociales en Prevención de Desastres en America Latina and is on the editorial boards of Environmental Disasters, the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction and Desastres y Sociedad. He is currently a member of the scientific committee on Integrated Research on Disaster Risk of the International Council for Science and the Climate Change Task Force of the American Anthropological Association.

What is the Definition of Paragraph?

A paragraph is a non-word sentence that contains a single idea, generally identified by the subject of the writing. A paragraph normally consists of at least one sentence and one or more clauses. Although not required by the grammar of any language, most paragraphs are intended as an expected constituent of further, longer prose. However, this is not to say that a written piece can be without a paragraph.

The term "definition" refers to a certain set of circumstances which are given definite shape or form. It is thus used to indicate that a thing is present in existence, but has not been determined or characterized. It can also refer to the entire class or type of articles. A definition of an article therefore can include any word or group of words that would determine the nature or end state of the entity referred to.

For an example of definition, let us take the definition of paragraph given above. The meaning of this definition will be clear if we replace each word in the previous sentence with its corresponding word or group of words. In this way, it will be easier for us to understand the meaning of this example. As a matter of fact, any sentence consisting of at least one word can be a definition of another, so long as both sentences follow the same logic. It must be noted though that an article cannot truly be a definition if the article already consists of a complete sentence.

The first example of definition paragraph is the sentence "The man who climbed the Everest passed away at the mountain's foot." Here, the sentence obviously includes a reference to the man who climbed the tallest mountain on earth. On the other hand, the article "he climbed the Everest" can be interpreted to mean "he scaled the tallest mountain." In this case, it would not be impossible for the introductory paragraph to also refer to the man who scaled the mountain as well as the mountain.

Another example of the definition of a paragraph that is problematic is the sentence "A picture tells a thousand words." The basic idea of this sentence is that a picture can tell a thousand words. However, what is the point of reading that sentence if it refers to the qualities of words that can only be understood by words? This problem is compounded when we come to the middle of the article and encounter a paragraph that has nothing to do with either the introductory paragraph or the body of the article.

The correct answer to what is the definition of a paragraph, as far as the essay itself is concerned, is that the definition of a paragraph exists at the beginning of the article (the point where the article gets its name from) and persists throughout the entire article. It is not necessary to define each and every paragraph in the article. However, the use of introductory sentences and paragraph names (as well as the use of introductory phrases such as "A picture tells a thousand words") needs to be controlled so that there is consistency throughout the essay.