Organizing information

While you’re finding information on your topic, think about how you will group or organize that information to make it accessible and persuasive to readers. At the simplest level, writers most often group information in their writing projects according to four principles—space, time, logic, and association.

Spatial organization

Spatial organization of texts allows the reader to “walk through,” beginning at one point and moving around in an organized manner—say, from near to far, left to right, or top to bottom. It can be especially useful when you want the audience to understand the layout of a structure or the placement of elements and people in a scene: texts such as a museum visitors’ audio guide, a written-word description of a historic battlefield, or a video tour of a new apartment might all call for spatial organization. Remember that maps, diagrams, and other graphics may help readers visualize your descriptions more effectively.

Chronological organization

Organization can also indicate when events occur, usually chronologically—by time—from first to last. Chronological organization is the basic method used in cookbooks, lab reports, instruction manuals, and many stories and narrative films. You may find it useful to organize information by describing or showing the sequence of events or the steps in a process.

Logical organization

Organizing according to logic means relating pieces of information in ways that make sense. Some of the most commonly used logical patterns include illustration, definition, division and classification, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, problem and solution, analogy, and narration.

Associational organization

Some writers organize information through a series of associations that grow directly out of their own experiences and memories. In doing so, they may rely on a sensory memory, such as an aroma, a sound, or a scene. Thus, associational organization is common in personal narrative, where the writer follows a chain of associations to render an experience vividly for readers, as in this description:

Flying from San Francisco to Atlanta, I looked down to see the gentle roll of the Smoky Mountains begin to appear. Almost at once, I was transported back to my granny’s porch, sitting next to her drinking iced tea and eating peaches. Those fresh-picked peaches were delicious—ripened on the tree, skinned, and eaten with no regard for the sticky juice trickling everywhere. And on special occasions, we’d make ice cream, and Granny would empty a bowl brimming with chopped peaches into the creamy dish. Now—that was the life!

Combined organizational patterns

In much of your writing, you will want to use two or more principles of organization. You might, for example, combine several passages of narration with vivid examples to make a striking comparison, as one student did in an essay about the dramatic differences between her life in her Zuni community and her life as a teacher in Seattle. In addition, you may want to include not only visuals but sound and other multimedia effects as well.

See examples of paragraphs that combine patterns here.

Sample: A student’s organizational patterns

First-year writing student Emily Lesk begins the final draft of her essay with what she calls a “confession”: I don’t drink Coke. She follows this opening with an anecdote about a trip to Israel during which she nevertheless bought a T-shirt featuring the Coca-Cola logo. She goes on to explore what lies behind this purchase, relating it to the masterful advertising campaigns of the Coca-Cola Company and illustrating the way that the company’s advertising “sells” a certain kind of American identity along with its products. She closes her draft by reflecting on the implications of this relationship between corporate advertising and national identity. Thus her essay, which begins with a personal experience, combines the patterns of narrative with cause-effect and comparison.