Shaping a multitude of ideas and evidence into a coherent, logically organized argument is no easy task, yet it is among the most important aspects of writing.
Organization is not usually a procedure you perform once and for all. When you first begin to shape your paper topic, you begin considering the points you want to make and in what order it would make sense to present them. With further thought and research, you substantially change your initial organization, adding several new ideas, dropping weaker ideas, and dividing some ideas into two or three parts. You quickly realize that organization is a much more continual process.
Even though an organization may seem clear to you, readers won't have any idea why you've arranged your ideas a particular way unless you use transitional phrases to make the logical links among ideas explicit. Without those useful transitions helping to bridge the gap between where the essay has been and where it's going, readers see a mere list of ideas strung one after another like a string of interchangeable beads.
Sample Transitions: In
the following example, a student moves from an initial, very broad string-of-beads
type outline to a much more well-defined and logically ordered organization.
One thing that really helped this student was limiting
the scope of her essay to a pursuit of single
significant cause, rather than a list of many unrelated causes. The connections
among ideas are indicated by color coding (e.g., all the red highlights
show the continued treatment of racism, the blue ideas are linked to each
other, as are the purple ideas, etc. The bold black words demonstrate the
use of common ready-made transitional words).
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Thesis: The hysteria of the American public led to the internment of the Nikkei during WWII. Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. The imperial Japanese army had victory after victory in the Pacific arena. The Japanese were shown by the media in a bad light. Government officials were racist.
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Thesis: The racism inherent to the serious journalism of respected newspapers played a significant role in fanning the anti-Japanese sentiments which made the internment of over 120,000 Nikkei from the West Coast possible. Anti-Japanese journalism in American stetches as far back as the nineteenth century. The Japanese's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor gave reporters and editors what they felt was clear justification for continuing and intensifying newspapers' campaign of overt racism. Nothing, however, could justfy the sometimes bizarre headlines and stories of these well-respected newspapers. In part, such strange and fantastical stories served the purpose of propaganda: that is, they clearly identified and vilified the enemy ("them") even as they provided a common rallying point which consolidated a patriotic American identity ("us"). Unfortunately, another consequence of such stories is that they identified the enemy as an entire race -- with grave implications for Japanese and Japanese-American residents of the U.S. Blaming the widespread anti-Japanese
racism on the news media only, however, oversimplifies the
complex and reciprocal interaction between the media and the public which
it both informs and reflects.
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One suggestion for constructing a meaningful organization is to simply list your topics on a page, forgetting about the paragraph, evidence, and transitions for the moment. For example, someone writing about the effects of no-till farming might come up with the following list of topics:
The author could come up with any number of ways to order this material, but he decides to impose certain categories on these topics.costs less less equipment saves time controls erosion saves topsoil macropores uses more chemicals provides more organic material saves water
Thesis: The practice of no-till farming results in several benefits for both the environment and the farmer.
Practicing no-till farming saves farmers countless tons of topsoil annually due to the effects of residue, or crop leftovers, which cling to soil and prevent erosion.
Although the reduction of erosion is the main benefit, residue offers farmers another significant benefit: the ability to trap water and protect the soil from the evaporative effect of the wind, thus providing moister soils.
Another positive effect of residue is the development of macropores, created by stubble roots and earthworms, which help facilitate the movement of water and oxygen to the roots of crops.
While the earthworms and roots are busy making pores in the soil, they're also increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil.
Besides the effects on the land, no-till provides benefits, and significant ones at that, for farmers. (saves time, money, less equipment).
Despite no-till's positive effects on the environment and for the farmer, opponents of no-till point to what some people argue as the only negative consequence of no-till: increased chemical use.
Whether or not chemicals used in no-till farming damage the environment is a serious concern. Modern chemicals, however, are much less toxic than their counterparts in early generations, are very biodegradable, and used at much smaller rates of application.
This essay ends by weighing the benefits of no-till against the chemical usage and concluding that, for the sake of the soil and the farmer, no-till seems to yield more positive effects than conventional tillage.
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