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5.4: Organizing Your Writing

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    Skills to Develop

    • Understand how and why organizational techniques help writers and readers stay focussed


    This section covers three ways to organize body paragraphs:

    1. Chronological order
    2. Order of importance
    3. Spatial order



    Chronological Order

    In Chapter 4, you learned that chronological arrangement has the following purposes:

    To explain the history of an event or a topic

    To tell a story or relate an experience

    To explain how to do or to make something

    To explain the steps in a process.



    Writing at Work

    At some point in your career you may have to file a complaint with your human resources department. Using chronological order is a useful tool in describing the events that led up to your filing the grievance. You would logically lay out the events in the order that they occurred using the key transitional words. The more logical your complaint, the more likely you will be well received and helped.


    Writing essays containing heavy research

    Writing essays with the aim of listing, explaining, or narrating




    Exercise 5.11


    Order of Importance

    Recall from Chapter 4 that order of importance is best used for the following purposes:

    Persuading and convincing

    Ranking items by their importance, benefit, or significance

    Illustrating a situation, problem, or solution




    Writing at Work


    Exercise 5.12

    On a sheet of paper, write a paragraph that discusses a passion of yours. Your passion could be music, a particular sport, filmmaking, and so on. Your paragraph should be built on the reasons why you feel so strongly. Briefly discuss your reasons in the order of least to greatest importance.

    Spatial Order

    As stated in Chapter 4, spatial order is best used for the following purposes:

    Helping readers visualize something as you want them to see it


    Writing a descriptive essay

    Spatial order means that you explain or describe objects as they are arranged around you in your space, for example in a bedroom. As the writer, you create a picture for your reader, whose perspective is the viewpoint from which you describe what is around you.





    The following are possible transitional words and phrases to include when using spatial order:

    Just to the left or just to the right Behind
    Between On the left or on the right
    Across from A little further down
    To the south, to the east, and so on A few yards away
    Turning left or turning right  

    Exercise 5.13

    On a sheet of paper, write a paragraph using spatial order that describes your commute to work, school, or another location you visit often.

    CollaborationPlease share with a classmate and compare your answers.

    Exercise 5.14

    Look back at your outline from Exercise 5.9. Please share your formal sentence outline with a classmate and together evaluate whether you have organized your points chronologically, by order of importance, or spatially. Discuss if you have organized your paragraphs in the most appropriate and logical way.

    In the next chapter, you will build on this formal sentence outline to create a draft and develop your ideas further. Do not worry; you are not expected to have a completed paper at this point. You will be expanding on your sentences to form paragraphs and complete, well-developed ideas.

    key takeaways

    • The way you organize your body paragraphs ensures you and your readers stay focused on and draw connections to your thesis statement.

    Supplemental Exercises

    On a separate sheet of paper, choose one of the examples of a proper thesis statement from this chapter (one that interests you) and form three supporting points for that statement. After you have formed your three points, write a topic sentence for each body paragraph. Make sure that your topic sentences can be backed up with examples and details.

    Group activity. Choose one of the topics from Self-Practice Exercise 5.4 and form a yes/no question about that topic. Then, take a survey of the people in your class to find out how they feel about the subject. Using the majority vote, ask those people to write on slips of paper the reasons for their opinion. Using the data you collect, form a thesis statement based on your classmates’ perspectives on the topic and their reasons.

    On a separate sheet of a paper, write an introduction for an essay based on the thesis statement from the group activity using the techniques for introductory paragraphs that you learned in this chapter.

    Start a journal in which you record “spoken” thesis statements. Start listening closely to the opinions expressed by your teachers, classmates, friends, and family members. Ask them to provide at least three reasons for their opinion and record them in the journal. Use this as material for future essays.

    Open a magazine and read a lengthy article. See if you can pinpoint the thesis statement as well as the topic sentence for each paragraph and its supporting details.

    Journal entry #5

    Write two to three paragraphs responding to the following.

    Think back to times when you had to write a paper and perhaps struggled to get started. What did you learn this week that you will apply in future assignments to get the ideas flowing?

    Reflect on all of the content you have learned so far. What did you find challenging but are now more confident with? What, if anything, still confuses you or you know you need to practice more? How have your study skills, time management, and overall writing improved over the past month?

    Remember as mentioned in the Assessment Descriptions in your syllabus:

    You will be expected to respond to the questions by reflecting on and discussing your experiences with the week’s material.

    When writing your journals, you should focus on freewriting—writing without (overly) considering formal writing structures—but remember that it will be read by the instructor, who needs to be able to understand your ideas.

    Your instructor will be able to see if you have completed this entry by the end of the week but will not read all of the journals until next week.

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