process analysis

A method of paragraph or essay development by which a writer explains step by step how something is done or how to do something.

Process analysis writing can take one of two forms: (1) it can provide information about how something works (informative) or (2) it can explain how to do something (directive).

See also:

• 50 Writing Topics: Process Analysis
• Chronological Order
• How to Write an Instructional Outline
• Instructions
• Second-Person Point of View

Examples:

• "Camping Out," by Ernest Hemingway
• Process Analysis in Berry's "A Few Words for Motherhood"
• Process Analysis in Joseph Heller's Catch-22
• Process Analysis in Richard Selzer's "The Knife"
• Student Essay: How to Break In a New Baseball Glove
• Student Essay: How to Build a Sand Castle
• Student Essay: How to Catch River Crabs

Examples and Observations:

• Planning a good process analysis requires the writer to include all the essential steps. Be sure you have all the tools or ingredients needed. Arrange the steps in the correct sequence. Like all good writing, a process essay requires a thesis to tell the reader the significance of the process. The writer can tell the reader how to do something, but also should inform the reader about the usefulness or importance of the endeavor."
  (G. H. Muller and H. S. Wiener, The Short Prose Reader. McGraw-Hill, 2006)



• Reviewing Your Process
  "When you revise your process writing, think about the people who will be reading it. Ask yourself these questions:
  1. Have I chosen the best starting point? Think about how much your audience already knows before you decide where to begin describing the process. Don't assume your readers have background knowledge that they may not have.
  2. Have I provided enough definitions of terms? . . .
  3. Have I been specific enough in the details?"
  (Robert Funk, et al., The Simon and Schuster Short Prose Reader, 2nd ed. Prentice Hall, 2000)



• Example: How to Remove Chewing Gum From Hair
  1. Prepare an ice sack.
     Place several cubes of ice in a plastic bag or thin cloth. Seal or hold it closed.
  
  
  2. Apply ice pack to hair.
     Move the affected hair away from the scalp and press the ice against the gum for 15 to 30 minutes or until the gum freezes solid. Use a rubber glove or a dry washcloth to hold the ice compress if your hand becomes chilled.
  
  
  3. Crack the frozen gum into pieces.
     With one hand, hold the stuck section of the hair between the gum clot and the scalp, and break the frozen gum into small pieces.
  
  
  4. Remove the gum.
     Gently pull the frozen gum pieces from the hair using your other hand. If the warmth of your hand begins to melt the gum, refreeze and repeat until all the gum has been removed from the hair.
  (Joshua Piven et al., The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Parenting. Chronicle Books, 2003)



• Example: How to Mark a Book
  There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here's the way I do it:
  1. Underlining: of major points, of important or forceful statements.
  2. Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
  3. Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. . . .
  4. Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
  5. Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
  6. Circling of key words or phrases.
  7. Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the book. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author's points in the order of their appearance.
  (Mortimer Adler, "How to Mark a Book." Saturday Review, July 6, 1940)



• The Limitations of Language
  "Those who think they are testing a boy's 'elementary' command of English by asking him to describe in words how one ties one's tie or what a pair of scissors is like, are far astray. For precisely what language can hardly do at all, and never does well, is to inform us about complex physical shapes and movements. . . . Hence we never in real life voluntarily use language for this purpose; we draw a diagram or go through pantomimic gestures."
  (C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 1967)