Teachers of writing have two options available to them when it comes to teaching paragraphing. There are, broadly speaking, either laissez faire approaches, or tightly prescriptivist ones. While the latter approaches have, at times, been challenged, they are entrenched in textbooks and testing rubrics, and are highly influential in some educational settings. In drawing on a wide range of research findings from a number of linguistic, educational and psychological research specialisms, this article presents a novel descriptivist pedagogy of paragraphing. By means of an analogy, paragraphing is described in a way in which research findings are respected, while at the same time educators’ concerns and needs are addressed.