How to Write a Sandwich Paragraph

Imagine a side view of a sandwich you are making in your kitchen. In between two slices of bread are ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce, and mayo. Imagine that you have borrowed the tomato from your neighbor because you were out of tomato. Each ingredient of the sandwich represents a sentence. The tomato represents the quotation or paraphrase that you borrowed from your research. Obviously, the tomato goes in the middle of the sandwich, not on top of the top slice of bread and not underneath the bottom slice of bread. In the same way, a quotation or paraphrase should appear in the middle of your paragraph, not as the first sentence and not as the last sentence. You need to write your own topic sentence and your own transition sentence.

-----------------
/                    /        ----->  Top slice of bread (Topic sentence)
-----------------
mayo
lettuce
tomato             ------->    Quotation or paraphrase
cheese
ham
----------------
/                 /           ----->  Bottom slice of bread (Transition sentence)
----------------

In this illustration, the paragraph has seven sentences; six written by the student and one sentence from research. The important thing to remember is that any quotation in your essay is "sandwiched" between sentences of your own. So I have 3 rules to help you avoid having your research run away with your essay:

    1. Don’t begin a paragraph with a quotation or a paraphrase.

    2. Don’t end a paragraph with a quotation or a paraphrase.

    3. Don't place quotations or paraphrases back to back.  Comment in between.

Here is an example of a "sandwich" paragraph from the body of a student essay called "In Defense of Hunting":

It is a fact that deer hunters help to keep the deer population in balance with the environment. Since so many of their natural predators have almost died out in this state, the deer population could quickly grow much larger than the land can support. In "Hunters to the Rescue," Linda L. Steiner points out that in Pennsylvania, the deer population has grown to the point where authorities have allowed doe hunting for part of the season (12). Without hunting, thousands of deer would slowly die of starvation in the leafless winter woods. This may sound like a self-serving argument (like the words of a parent who beats a child and insists, "This hurts me more than it does you; I'm only doing it for your own good"). But it is a fact that cannot be denied.

Note that the borrowed material is paraphrased, not quoted, but proper credit still is given. The sentence in quotation marks repeats an old saying. In this paragraph, the student wrote five of the six sentences. One sentence was borrowed from research.