Chapter Thirteen

Chapter 13 went over ways in organizing your paper.  Organizing patterns provide an overall principle for arranging your argument and research writing project document.  There are lists of different patterns to go about.  Chronology, description, definition, cause/effect, process explanation, pro/con, multiple perspectives, compare/contrast, strengths/weaknesses, costs/benefits, and problem/solution.  Your choice of organizing pattern will reflect your purpose and the roles you develop as a writer.  Once you have decided on an  organizing pattern, you can go about using strategies such as labeling, grouping, clustering, and mapping to determine how to present your argument.  Labeling can help you understand how and where you will use the evidence gathered from your sources.  Mapping is useful when you explore sequences of reasons and evidence.  An outline is important towards your paper.  When creating an outline, it represents the sequence in which your reasons and evidence will appear.  There is both formal and informal outlines.  Formal outlines provide an accurate list of points addressed towards your paper.  Informal outlines on the other hand take many forms.  For example, brief list of words, short phrases, or series of sentences.  The most common types of formal outlines are topical and sentence outlines.  Topical outlines present both topics and subtopics.  Sentence outlines use complete sentences to identify the points that want to be covered.  I plan to stay organized throughout the process of my paper.