Chapter Thirteen

            Organizing was the focus of chapter thirteen. It started off by looking at what organizing patterns should be used, first of which was chronology. The chronology pattern examines a sequence of events in relation to time. Such a system would be commonly used in a document examining a historical event. Many other patterns exist, including description, which is a concise orderly point by point explanation, cause and effect, which looks at various factors and then leads them to their outcome, pros and cons, which organizes a list of good and bad about certain issues in order to support a side, and other patterns. Once a pattern on determined, the arrangement of arguments becomes necessary. Labelling evidence encourages quick understanding of its topic, and therefore, allows evidence to be easily organized according to an outline. Grouping evidence, or organizing evidence according to similarity, is also an option. This can be done by storing evidence in separate files. Clustering can be used by listing out visually a thesis statement and moving out from that to other related reasons and evidence. This way, the relationship between those separate facets can be discovered. Another is mapping. Through this, the reasons and evidence are laid out in a sequence of building. This form works well with patterns such as chronology, cause and effect, comparison contrast, cost benefit, and problem solution. The creation of an outline allows a general view of the sequence of arguments and reasons throughout the document. An informal outline can vary, but in general would show the key points of a document. A formal outline is more strict, and uses numerals and letters to order points, sub points, and any further points. This helps show the hierarchy of the points. To depict the contents of the points, short phrases can be used, but entire sentences also. Sentences can start the process towards a draft of a paper, and also help depict the structure of the paper.