organization

Definition:

The arrangement of ideas, incidents, evidence, or details in a perceptible order in a paragraph or essay. See also:

• Arrangement
• Narrative
• Description
• Example
• Process Analysis
• Cause and Effect
• Comparison
• Classification
• Analogy
• Definition
• Argument

Etymology

From the Latin, "tool, instrument"

Observations:

• "If you explain to your readers where you're taking them, they will follow more willingly; if you lead carefully, step by step, using a good road map, they will know where they are and will trust you.
  
  "Your method of organization should be simple, straightforward, and logical, and it should be appropriate for your subject and audience."
  (Toby Fulwiler and Alan Hayakawa, The Blair Handbook. Prentice Hall, 2003)



• "Although paragraphs (and indeed whole essays) may be patterned in any number of ways, certain patterns of organization occur frequently, either alone or in combination: examples and illustration, narration, description, process, comparison and contrast, analogy, cause and effect, classification and division, and definition. There is nothing particularly magical about these patterns (sometimes called methods of development). They simply reflect some of the ways in which we think."
  (Diana Hacker, The Bedford Handbook, 6th ed. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002)



• "Ancient attitudes toward arrangement were very different from modern ones. In modern thought, the proper arrangement of a piece of discourse is often dictated by genre: there are formulas for arranging business letters, papers written in school, scientific reports, and even romance novels. . . .
  
  "While ancient discussions of arrangement were formal and prescriptive to some extent, ancient rhetors paid much more attention to rhetorical situations than to formal rules."
  (Sharon Crowlee and Debra Hawhee, Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, 3rd ed. Pearson, 2004)

Pronunciation: or-geh-neh-ZA-shun