The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the currently taught methods of paragraph development are actually used in contemporary expository writing. Composition textbooks published since 1960 were examined to ascertain which methods of development are being taught. To discover the types of paragraph development found in current writing, 100 paragraphs were analyzed from each of three sources: letters to a newspaper editor, articles from a professional journal, and articles from a magazine. The analysis of all 300 paragraphs indicated that (1) eight of the nine textbook methods of paragraph development were used at the following rates: examples (24%), details (22%), reasons (8%), chronology (6%), contrast (1%), definition (1%), repetition (1%), and cause-effect (1%); (2) the textbook method of comparison was not used; and (3) 35% of the paragraphs studied were not developed by textbook methods. (Author/JS)