Organizing an Essay

1. Organizing an Essay 4 Strategies for Organizing Your Writing

2. Two Reasons • Two reasons (or three or five or fifteen) is the easiest pattern • Straightforward way to organize ideas, points, arguments or steps • Write one reason, idea, point, argument right after another sequentially and support each with evidence • This pattern is favored by testing agencies and traditionalists

3. Nestorian Order • Ministers favor this organizational pattern because of their purpose • They want to start with a punch and end with a bang • In testing situations, Nestorian order is a winning pattern • Begin with your second best idea, follow with other ideas, points, arguments, or steps that have less depth and conclude with your best point, argument or step • By saving the best for last, graders are left with a strong impression instead of rambling or dwindling rhetoric

4. Strawman and One Reason • In examining the strawman pattern, students can raise an opposing point, argument or idea and then systematically invalidate it • After deflating the opponent, students go on to present their points, arguments or ideas • Lawyers use strawman because their goal is to knock down the opposing argument, thereby discrediting the opposing view and winning the case

5. Concession • When considering concession, the rhetoric of politicians, use this pattern when there is opposing data to the argument that cannot be refuted • Concede the existence of an opposing viewpoint, argument or idea, but then proceed to elaborate on your data • In scholarship research, to ignore opposing information reduces the credibility of the writer • You must acknowledge the opposing viewpoint – even if you cannot counter it – to make your views viable