Ordering the Paragraphs

Asking questions should help each part of an essay to follow the previous part in a logical order. But there is another consideration in organization beyond what makes sense in the structure. The order of presentation should be the most reasonable and also the most effective order possible. A good guideline to follow is to put “like” or similar things together. It is obviously strange to write, “I love my mother, my father, carrots, and my brother.”

It might be better to write, “I love my mother, my father, my brother, and carrots” since “carrots” are neither people nor related to you. There are, in fact, several ways to determine the best—most reasonable and most effective—order.

Which sentence of the following pairs puts similar things together? Mouse over the sentence that you think is in the correct order.

Another guide is that the most important or surprising thing should come last. Is it better to write, “I love my cell phone, my dog, and my family” or “I love my family, my dog, and my cell phone”? It depends on the purpose of your writing. If you're leading into a serious essay about the importance of family, then the first option is better. If you're leading into a lighter essay about how much you use your cell phone, then the second could be more surprising and, therefore, more effective.

Choose which passage puts the most important thing or most surprising thing last in each of the following pairs of passages. Mouse over the sentence that you think is in the correct order.

The final guide is that exceptions and objections go last: “I love my dog, my mother, and my sister, but not my weird cousin.” This guide can be an exception to the previous rule.

Again, these are the guides for organizational pattern:

1. Similar things go together.
2. The most important things go last.
3. Exceptions and objections go last—even if this goes against rule #2.

Using the reasons from our demonstration, decide the best order for them in your paper. The reasons were as follows:

1. Travel makes you aware that other people’s ways of living are normal to them.
2. Travel makes it clear that your ways of living may not be normal to other people.
3. (The exception) People who live differently can be found within any community.

Make an educated guess as to how these reasons should be arranged in the body of the paper. Then check your understanding to see how each possible order measures up to the guidelines:

After setting up guides that make ordering an essay seem so easy that a computer could do it, it’s important to say that there’s more than one way to make a decision about order. It depends on what you want a reader’s response to be.

But if we don’t have any special effect in mind or any unusual response we want from a reader, the first order would be the most obvious choice. It places the objection last while the two less surprising reasons come first.