The worst offense of the five-paragraph essay is its ignorance of the fact that good writing must also be interesting. Professional writers shirk the format in favor of a looser and more creative ...

“Rigid” and “constraining” are the two words critics often use to describe the format. There’s no denying that a five-paragraph essay—comprising an introduction with a thesis, three ...

As time goes by, I am ever more perplexed by why we make students learn to write the classic five-paragraph essay but have so ... going from a memorized outline of planned remarks but expressing ...