Questions to Guide Arrangement

• When is an introduction necessary and when can it be omitted or abbreviated?
• When should we make our statement of facts continuous and when should we break it up and distribute it throughout the discourse?
• Under what circumstances can we omit the statement of facts altogether?
• When should we begin by dealing with the arguments advanced by our opponents and when should we begin by proposing our own arguments?
• When is it advisable to present our strongest arguments first and when it is best to begin with our weakest arguments and work up to our strongest?
• Which of our arguments will our audience readily accept and which of them must they be induced to accept?
• Should we attempt to refute our opponents’ arguments as a whole or deal with them in detail?
• How much ethical appeal must we exert in order to conciliate the audience?
• Should we reserve our emotional appeals for the conclusion or distribute them throughout the discourse?
• What evidence or documents should we make use of and where in the discourse will this kind of argument be most effective? (Corbett, 1990, pp. 280-1)

Guidelines for Taking Inventory of Your Notes and Forming Your Paragraph Topics

• Write down in any order the important ideas that you find in your notes. At this point, the items don’t have to be related to each other in sequence.
• Do NOT try to summarize all your notes or even summarize each of your notes. At this point, you are working on a paragraph outline, not a summary of your research.
• Do NOT try to link the ideas that you write down to specific sources. At this point, there is no special reason to place the names of the sources next to your list of ideas; not every statement in your new list will be included in your essay. Later, you will decide which source to use in support of which topic sentence.
• Think about your own reactions to the information that you have collected. At this point, the many strands of your research begin to become the product of your own thinking. Now you are deciding what is worth writing about.
• Use your own words. At this point, even if you only jot down a phrase or a fragment, it should be your version of the source’s idea. Even if the point has appeared in ten different articles (and has been noted in ten different places in your research notes), you are now, in some sense, making it your own. However, this does not necessarily mean you will not be siting these sources in your final document!
• Evaluate your list of important ideas that are worth writing about. At this point, notice which ideas are in the mainstream of your research, discussed by several of your sources, and which ones appear in only one or two sources. Consider whether you have enough evidence to support these ideas or whether you should exclude them from your master outline. Think about eliminating the ones that seem minor or remote from the topic. Remember to look for and combine similar statements.
• Think about the sequence of ideas on your final list and the possible strategies for organizing your project. At this point, consider how these ideas relate to the topic and research question with which you began your research.
• Arrange your list of topics in a sequence that has meaning for you, carries out your strategy, and develops your thesis in a clear direction. (Spatt, 1991, pp. 357-8)

Methods for developing an argument/organization:

• Sequential development
• Chronological development
• Comparison
• Division and classification
• Spatial development
• Cause-and-effect development
• General-to-specific development
• Specific-to-general development
• Order-of-importance development (Alread, Brusaw, & Oliu, 2002, pp. 15-6)

Organizing for Clarity

• Construct an overview
• Chunk information
• Construct headings (Gurak & Lannon, 2001, pp. 43-5)

References

Alred, G. J., Brusaw, C. T., & Oliu, W. E. (2002). The technical writer’s
     companion (3rd ed.). Boston: Beford/St. Martin’s.

Corbett, E. P. J. (1990). Classical rhetoric for the modern student
     (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford UP.

Gurak, L. J., & Lannon, J. M. (2001). A concise guide to technical
     communication. New York: Longman.

Spatt, B. (1991). Writing from sources (3rd ed.). New York: St. Martin’s
     Press.