Back in my late 20s and early 30s, somewhere on the way to learning how to write like a grownup, I learned the rules for constructing a paragraph. Here on the verge of 63 and retirement, I find that ...

Let’s pretend you’re looking at a Word document on your computer screen right now. On the page are two paragraphs. The top paragraph (let’s call it “Paragraph A” for kicks) is pretty darn boring.