03. Classification and Order

Dated Jan 3, 2017; last modified on Sun, 14 Mar 2021

Classification

Remove material that’s not related to the specific subject-thesis.

To hold readers attention, group materials into \(\le\) 6 categories.

Order

The order in which you present the groups should serve a larger purpose.

Spatial Order

The furniture in your room, a tour of the Louvre, or a trip across the country.

A study of Michelangelo’s Moses: the sweep of marble hair; the furrowed brow; the piercing eyes; the famous hands; the strong angle of the body; the firmly planted feet.

Chronological Order

Progressive order builds to a climax. Reverse order is anticlimactic.

Sometimes, you want to highlight an exciting event out of time, and then step back into a progressive sequence.

Flashbacks allows economy because the writer revisits previous events only when necessary.

Foreshadowing gives a sneak peek to show the significance of the material at hand.

Cause-and-Effect Order

Cause-to-effect sequence is climactic. Suitable for a mystery story.

Effect-to-cause is anticlimactic, but useful for technical reports.

Emphatic Order

The Beethoven Symphonies, the loves of your life, the classes you’re taking this semester.

Why not have separate essays for this?

Least-to-most important is climactic; most-to-least is anticlimactic. Spend more time on an item to show its significance.

Beautiful Writing: My Wood, E. M. Forster

As he stuck out in front and behind as he wedged himself this way and that in the crystalline entrance and bruised his well-fed flanks, he saw beneath him a comparatively slim camel passing through the eye of a needle and being woven into the robe of God.

Lust is forced on us by an internal defect in the soul, by the feeling that in property may lie the germs of self-development and of exquisite or heroic deeds.

Exercises

Discuss the contents of the room but categorize in different schemes, e.g. function, composition, configuration.

Instead of sex, race, region or nationality, suggest imaginative classifications e.g. Platonist or Aristotelian.