Your choice of organizing pattern will reflect your purpose and the role or roles you adopt as a writer (see Chapters 5 through 10). Consider which pattern will help you achieve your goals as a writer, meet the needs and interests of your readers, adapt to your context, and be consistent with the genre (or type of document) you’ve chosen. Your choice of organizing pattern should also reflect the reasons and evidence you offer to convince readers to accept your thesis statement.

Keep in mind that a writer may use more than one organizing pattern in a document. For instance, a process explanation often works in tandem with chronology, since both present steps in a sequence. Similarly, a document presenting multiple perspectives might use the strengths/weaknesses pattern to evaluate the merits of each perspective.