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Classifying is an essential writing strategy for thinking about and organizing ideas, information, and experience. The process of classifying involves either grouping or dividing. Writers group related items (such as apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries, cantaloupes, and cherries) and label the general class of items they grouped together (fruit). Or they begin classifying with a general class (such as fruit) and then divide it into subclasses of particular types (apples, oranges, etc.).

This chapter shows how you can organize and illustrate a classification you have read about or constructed yourself, and it concludes with some sentence strategies you might use when classifying information.

Organizing Classification

Classifying in writing serves primarily as a means of organization—of creating a framework for the presentation of information, whether in a few paragraphs of an essay or in an entire book. This section surveys several examples of classifying, ranging from a simple two-level classification to a complex multilevel system.

The simplest classification divides a general topic into two subtopics. Here is an example by Edward J. Loughram from a proposal to keep at-risk teenagers out of jail and help them lead productive lives. Before he can present his proposed solution, Loughram has to get readers to see that juvenile offenders are not all the same. He does this by explaining that although statistics show that the number of juvenile offenders is rising, they do not take into account the fact that there are two distinct groups of young people getting into trouble. He classifies juvenile offenders into these two categories to argue that the problem of delinquency can be solved, at least in part, by interrupting the criminal paths of the second group:

Two primary factors explain the growing numbers of juvenile offenders. First, there is indeed a rise in serious crime among young people, fueled by the steady stream of drugs and weapons into their hands. These dangerous offenders are committed—legitimately—to juvenile-correction agencies for long-term custody or treatment.

But a second, larger group is also contributing to the increase. It consists of 11-, 12-, and 13-year-old first-time offenders who have failed at home, failed in school, and fallen through the cracks of state and community social-service agencies. These are not serious offenders, or even typical delinquents. But they are coming into the correctional system because we have ignored the warning signs among them.

— EDWARD J. LOUGHRAM, “Prevention of Delinquency”

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From Loughram’s essay, we see how a writer can use a simple two-category classification to advance an argument. The concept analysis by John Tierney in Chapter 4 also offers a two-category classification to analyze the effects of decision fatigue. The figure below offers a tree diagram of his analysis:

What the tree diagram shows at a glance is that in a classification system, some categories, such as “do nothing” and “act impulsively,” are on the same level, or coordinate; others (in this case “effects of decision fatigue”) are on a higher level, or superordinate; and some (“fail to grant parole,” “buy junk food,” “splurge”) are on a lower level, or subordinate. The highest level represents the most general category, and lower levels identify increasingly specific types. Tierney takes his classification to the most specific level by offering examples of individuals who suffered from decision fatigue. For example, he begins with a lengthy example of a judge who failed to grant parole because of decision fatigue, and he quotes Jean Twenge on her impulsive decisions while creating a gift registry for her wedding.