<p>3, 4, or 5? and how many supporting points should there be?</p>
<p>if you have one big example + one medium sized one with 4 paragraphs. I think that is the best approach IMO. It's hard to elaborate well on 3 examples.</p>
<p>Intro</p>
<p>Example 1</p>
<p>Example 2</p>
<p>Example 3 (If available)</p>
<p>Conclusion</p>
<p>so it's either 5 or 4 depending on the # of examples you have.
it's better to have one huge example rather than having 3 tiny ones.</p>