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When the academic essay format is taught to some young children in North America, it is given the likeness of a hamburger.  The introduction and conclusion are the enclosing "buns" and the main body is the "meat" of the essay.  The reason for mentioning this analogy is to make it fully clear that it is in this section of the essay where most of the words are and where most of the material must be conveyed after being introduced the in previous section.  This main body of the essay is where the thesis is developed and supported.

Quite often, the ideal of the essay body is presented as consisting of three paragraphs. However, in most cases the division of ideas in the essay is not so neat. Regardless of the number of (sub)ideas to be discussed, the important factor is that each paragraph develops a single idea from the ideas that relate to the essay's argument/thesis.

In doing this, each paragraph should have its own topic sentence which achieves two main objectives:

1) Mentions the idea that is to be elaborated upon in that paragraph
2) Connects the idea for the paragraph to the central argument of the essay

In the process of elaboration and explanation, vivid examples or quotations must be used so as to fully and effectively expound the issue. This would be in the best interest of the author so as to have the best explanation, and also so that the evaluator understands the point and its place in the overall argument.

So, among other things, the main body of the essay must be carefully organized, classified into logical subtopics, appropriately and adequately explained, arranged in a traceable and cohesive fashion - all this in order to arrive at a conclusion that is consistent with the overall argument of the essay set out in the introduction.

Words that are commonly found in the writing guides when they speak about the body section include "unity", "coherence", "logical", "structure". It goes without saying that if the essay did not begin with a solid and specific thesis, then not much can be unified with it nor can anything coherently follow from it. It also goes that if the essay does not fit together while reading, it would indicate a shortcoming on the pat fo the author and would serve to make life difficult for the evaluator. One of the guides went into a fair amount of detail about the issue of coherence and unity, and also mentioned another point to achieve this goal by saying that "paragraphs arranged in an order that builds rationally toward a conclusion consistent with the thesis" is a means of demonstrating coherence.

This leads to the issue of paragraphs in the main body of the essay and their function therein.