And it is sometimes genuinely confusing: where a sentence goes nearly but not quite up to the right margin, it’s unclear whether a new paragraph is intended or not. Occasionally, to avoid ambiguity, students leave an empty line in these cases, but persist with the halfway-house paragraphing elsewhere, so then we have something even ghastlier: inconsistent paragraphing.What I cannot understand is why this fault is not immediately apparent to the perpetrator. First, it doesn’t look attractive; one can’t tell at a glance how many paragraphs are on a page It is murky and half-hearted. Personally I find it teeth-grittingly annoying – as bad as misplaced apostrophes, or the use of “fortuitous” to mean “fortunate”, or people who say “haitch” instead of “aitch” Worse. I mean they don’t know how to show a new paragraph, they don’t know what paragraphs should look like on the page.
Once upon a time, it was all very simple. When you came to a new paragraph, you went on to the next line and indented. By a finger space if handwriting, by hitting the space bar three or five times if typing.

Then, with the advent of computers, the new style of block paragraphing appeared. It was easier to hit the return key twice than hit it once and then fiddle about with the space bar, and so people began, instead of indenting, to leave a whole line blank between paragraphs And there is nothing wrong with that. It is as though a great wave of collective amnesia has swept across the nation, and suddenly no one remembers how to do it any more. I have taught at every level, from basic skills through GCSE through AS and A2, to degree-level courses for the Open University – and at each level the fact is depressingly apparent: students no longer know how to paragraph I don’t mean they don’t know when to paragraph Many don’t, of course, but that’s another story. I think she will be robust in pursuing her members’ interests but I hope she will not be too aggressive when dealing with senior management.” RGr.garner independent.co.uk. Call me a pedant – really, go ahead, I won’t mind a bit – but I must protest in the strongest possible terms about the state of the nation’s paragraphing. Obviously, though, it still wants to have its cake and eat it on the workload agreement (by refusing to sign it but accepting its benefits).”On Chris Keates, I think it is too early to say.

I’ve noticed a change in the material that Steve is putting into schools. It gives the NUT position without condemning others.”Sinnott on Keates”Chris has done very well. She has got real clarity in terms of what she is pressing for and I think she is a very good leader of the NASUWT.”David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, on both”Steve Sinnott has done a pretty good job in turning round the NUT’s image that it is difficult to deal with. “Some of our members in schools that have implemented it can’t remember the last time they had any cover,” she says “Other schools are cherry-picking from it.