Examples, perhaps the most common pattern of organization, are appropriate whenever the reader might be tempted to ask, “For example?”

Normally my parents abided scrupulously by “The Budget,” but several times a year Dad would dip into his battered black strongbox and splurge on some irrational, totally satisfying luxury. Once he bought over a hundred comic books at a flea market, doled out to us thereafter at the tantalizing rate of two a week. He always got a whole flat of pansies, Mom’s favorite flower, for us to give her on Mother’s Day. One day a boy stopped at our house selling fifty-cent raffle tickets on a sailboat and Dad bought every ticket the boy had left—three books’ worth.

—Connie Hailey, student

Illustrations are extended examples, frequently presented in story form.

Part of [Harriet Tubman’s] strategy of conducting was, as in all battle-field operations, the knowledge of how and when to retreat. Numerous allusions have been made to her moves when she suspected that she was in danger. When she feared the party was closely pursued, she would take it for a time on a train southward bound. No one seeing Negroes going in this direction would for an instant suppose them to be fugitives. Once on her return she was at a railroad station. She saw some men reading a poster and she heard one of them reading it aloud. It was a description of her, offering a reward for her capture. She took a southbound train to avert suspicion. At another time when Harriet heard men talking about her, she pretended to read a book which she carried. One man remarked, “This can’t be the woman. The one we want can’t read or write.” Harriet devoutly hoped the book was right side up.

—Earl Conrad, Harriet Tubman