Arranging Speech Points Chronologically

Some speech topics lend themselves well to the arrangement of main points according to their occurrence in time relative to each other. The chronological pattern of arrangement (also called the temporal pattern) follows the natural sequential order of the main points. To switch points around would make the arrangement appear unnatural and might confuse the audience. Topics that describe a series of events in time (such as events leading to the adoption of a peace treaty) or develop in line with a set pattern of actions or tasks (such as plans for building a model car, procedures for admitting patients to a hospital) call out to be organized according to a chronological pattern of arrangement. A speech describing the development of the World Wide Web, for example, calls for a chronological, or time-ordered, sequence of main points:

THESIS STATEMENT: The Internet evolved from a small network designed for military and academic scientists into a vast array of networks used by billions of people around the globe.
  1. The Internet was first conceived in 1962 as the ARPANET to promote the sharing of research among scientists in the United States.
  2. In the 1980s a team created TCP/IP, a language that could link networks, and the Internet as we know it was born.
  3. At the end of the cold war, the ARPANET was decommissioned, and the World Wide Web constituted the bulk of Internet traffic.2

In addition to topics that involve time lines, the chronological arrangement is appropriate for any topic that involves a series of sequential steps. A speaker might describe the steps in a research project on fruit flies, for example, or explain the steps in a recipe.