Description can use any of the orders of organization — time, space, or importance — depending on your purpose. (For more on these orders of organization, see “Arrange Your Ideas” in Chapter 3.) If you are writing to create a main impression of an event (for example, a description of fireworks), you might use time order. If you are describing what someone or something looks like, you might use space order, the strategy used in the paragraph model in “Paragraphs vs. Essays in Description.” If one detail about your topic is stronger than the others, you could use order of importance and leave that detail for last. This approach is taken in the essay model in “Paragraphs vs. Essays in Description.”

Use transitions to move your readers from one sensory detail to the next. Usually, transitions should match your order of organization. For a list of transition words, see “Revise for Coherence” in Chapter 4.