Civil Service Practice
Start free

Professional and Subprofessional · Civil Service Exam

Paragraph organization

You are given a paragraph's sentences out of order and asked to put them back. Exactly one order is right.

Find the sentence that can stand alone first. It introduces something the others refer back to, and it will not contain a pronoun or a connective pointing at anything earlier.

Then work forwards. Every remaining sentence carries something that points backwards - `this arrangement`, `the repair`, `they` - and belongs immediately after whatever it points at.

Check the last sentence separately. A closing sentence usually looks back on everything before it, which is why putting it first is the commonest wrong answer on offer.

Worked examples

Try these, then read why.

Written for this platform and generated from the same bank the practice sets draw on. Every wrong option is explained, because knowing why a distractor was tempting is most of the learning.

Arrange the sentences below into the most logical paragraph.

1. The repair cost less than the council had set aside for it.
2. The streetlight at the corner of the market road had been dark for a month.
3. Vendors who pack up after dusk say the corner now feels safer than it has in years.
4. An electrician sent by the municipality replaced the fixture in a single afternoon.
  1. A3-2-4-1
  2. B2-4-1-3 (correct)
  3. C1-2-3-4
  4. D3-1-4-2

Find the sentence that can stand on its own first: it will introduce something the others refer back to. Here that is 2, and the order follows from it because 'the repair' refers back to the work described in the preceding sentence. Then check each remaining sentence for a word that points backwards - a pronoun, a demonstrative, or a connective - and place it after whatever it points at.

  • A This opens with the sentence that looks back on everything else, which cannot come first.
  • C This is the order the sentences are already printed in, which the item asks you to change.
  • D This runs the paragraph backwards, so every reference points at a sentence that has not been read yet.

Practise this properly.

Three examples show you the format. Finding out whether paragraph organization is actually costing you marks takes a measured set, which is what the free diagnostic is for.

Take the free diagnosticHow it works

Other topics