Reviewing the
Order of Elements

A cartoon of a dog explaining, in dog language, everything dogs are going to do when they’re in charge of the world. The human totally misunderstands.

Source: "Dog Talk," dougsamu, Flickr


Let’s take a look at the order I’ve put my outline in.

I. Thesis: Dogs make the best pets because they are smart and faithful companions.
II. Dogs are loyal.
  A. Protect their masters
                1.    Bark at strangers
                2.    Attack those who threaten their families
  B. Find their way home when lost
                1.    Travel country to find owners
                2.    Evidence
III. Dogs can show love.
  A. Wag their tails
                1.    Evidence
                2.    Evidence
  B. Lick owner’s face
                1.    Evidence
                2.    Evidence
IV. Dogs are smart.
  A. Perform jobs
                1.    Lead visually-impaired people
                       a. Quotation
                       b. Evidence
                2.    Find contraband for police
                       a. Quotation
                       b. Evidence
  B. Follow commands
                1.    Call 911
                        a. Quotation
                        b. Evidence
                2.   Do complex tricks in movies
                        a. Quotation
                        b. Evidence
V. Conclusion
  A. Dogs are called “man’s best friend” for a reason.

One of the great things about using word processing programs for writing is that if you don’t like the order you’ve written, it takes little more than a few clicks to change that. I’ve put “Dogs are smart” as the last major point of my paper. Is this where I want it to be? Let’s look at the thesis: “Dogs make the best pets because they are smart and faithful companions.” Major points should correspond with your thesis. To do this, I would need to move “Dogs are smart” to point II, right after the introduction. Loyalty and love illustrate my point that dogs are faithful, so I should move “Dogs are smart” and its subordinate points up to point II. If you write your paper without an outline, you might not even notice that the points are out of order. What if you like the order of your outline better than the order of your thesis? Not a problem; just reword your thesis accordingly.

Reviewing the order of your elements is especially important if you are using a thesis that has three parts like this one: “Dogs make the best pets because they are loyal, loving, and smart.” The outline above doesn’t correspond to this thesis at all. Again, I can either move the elements around to correspond to the thesis, or if I like the new order, rewrite my thesis.