Organization is an essential part of writing an effective essay. Present your points logically, so readers can easily follow along and see the strength of your main ideas. While the organization may change depending on what type of paper you are writing, a standard essay follows this organization: Introduction, Body Paragraphs, and Conclusion.
Background details: Put the attention-getting device into context. You may explain the attention-getter in more detail and show its broader significance.
Discussion of main subject and how it relates to the attention-getter: This discussion will introduce readers to your key ideas and direction for the essay.
Thesis: a one-to-two sentence statement that indicates the central idea of your paper and provides a roadmap for readers to follow as they proceed to the body paragraphs.
For more information, check out the guides that focus on the specific skills mentioned here, like the one called Writing Effective Introductions and another on writing Thesis Statements.
Body paragraphs contain the main points to be discussed and any support for these points from outside sources. This section will make up the majority of your writing and should present your ideas in an organized way (for more on this, see the Organizing Your Ideas section below).
Body paragraphs feature:
Topic Sentence: the first sentence of a body paragraph. As its name suggests, this statement indicates the primary subject of the paragraph. The topic sentence should be your own words. Avoid placing a quotation or citation in the topic sentence. Also, do not list multiple ideas in the topic sentence. Each body paragraph should focus on developing a single idea (not several ideas at once) to clearly convey your point.
Supporting Sentences: sentences that develop and prove the main idea in the topic sentence. Supporting Sentences include explanations, examples, and evidence (usually from outside sources). See the Supporting Sentences handout for more information.
Restatement of the thesis: rephrasing of the thesis to bring the essay full circle (without repeating the thesis verbatim). Restate your topic in a new way that reminds the reader of the primary purpose of your essay.
Review of the main ideas: touches briefly on the main supporting points discussed. This will help keep your ideas in focus for the reader before they read your closing comments.
A concluding comment or call to action: What you write will depend on what you are hoping to persuade your readers to do. You can end with a prediction (something that will happen if something does not change), a question (to get your readers to make their own predictions), a recommendation (actions that can be taken either by the reader or those responsible for the issues), or a related quotation.
Overall significance of the topic/final impression or message: gives your final impression on the subject by setting your discussion into a different, perhaps larger, context.
For more information, see the page on Writing Effective Conclusions.
While you will likely use the standard essay format as outlined above (with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion), you might still be wondering how to organize the ideas you will present in the body of your paper. The method you choose for organizing your ideas will depend on the purpose of your essay and the type of writing you’ve been asked to do.
If you are unsure, check out the page called Reading the Prompt & Understanding the Assignment or make an appointment with a Writing Coach. Listed in the tabs below are the methods typically used to organize the body of an essay and the types of writing for which they are best suited.
In this method, events and ideas are arranged in the order in which they occurred. This type of organization is most commonly used in narrative writing, which requires you to tell a story. However, chronological order is also used in expository writing (especially if explaining a process, like how to build a birdhouse or how to test for water pollution) and descriptive writing (especially if describing a process or event, like what it was like to travel to Greece, or summarizing a piece of literature, where it makes sense to start from the beginning).
In this method of organization, ideas are arranged according to their physical position or relationships. Often used in descriptive writing, the writer might describe a room by first noting what they saw (or heard or smelled) upon walking through the door and then move the reader through the room from left to right or front to back, describing as they go. There are topics that might lend themselves to this ordering when writing a persuasive piece as well. For example, if discussing a social issue that affects parts of the country in different ways, you might start by discussing effects on the West Coast, and then move the reader east, one area at a time.
Thematic order means that ideas are organized by concept, subtopic, or theory. This method is used in many types of writing, including expository, persuasive, and descriptive. If you are writing an expository piece on wine, you might choose to first discuss reds (as a subtopic) and then whites, or you may decide to break the topic into European, African, and Californian wines as subtopics. If you are writing a critical analysis (a type of persuasive writing) that discusses how successfully (or unsuccessfully) the director set the mood in a film, you could break the topic into discussions on the role that lighting, camera angle, and music played.
Sometimes called order of importance, emphatic organization asks you to decide how important each of your points are, placing emphasis on certain information over other pieces of information. There are several different approaches to this decision—you could order your ideas, examples, and points from most important to least important, most beneficial to least beneficial, or most significant to least significant.
You could also reverse the order of these approaches, building from least to most significant or beneficial, saving your strongest points or examples for last. If all of your points seem of equal importance, consider giving emphasis based on most to least familiar, simplest to most complex, or most to least frequent (or, of course, the reverse).
With so many choices, emphatic ordering accommodates many types of writing and topics. Persuasive essays often take advantage of this pattern of organization, especially the option that saves the best for last. For example, if you are arguing that professional basketball players are more athletic than pro baseball players, you might start by comparing the intensity of training camps and practice in each sport, move on to how much time players of each sport spend in moderate to intense motion, and finish with a discussion of Michael Jordan’s undeniable athletic superiority.
To improve an essay’s organization, ask yourself:
Does each main idea make sense?
Do ideas flow in a logical order? (Rearrange any paragraphs that seem out of order.)
Does each paragraph express one main idea? (If you have a paragraph with multiple ideas, separate them into different paragraphs to avoid combining too many ideas at once.)
Does each main idea support the thesis? (Revise or delete any ideas that do not support the thesis.)
Do any ideas need to be added to adequately support the thesis?
Effective organization helps create an effective essay. Focusing on organization in the drafting and revising process will assist you in crafting a clear and coherent paper.
For a more in-depth look at the different types of writing, or rhetorical styles, and how they are best organized, see the page called The Types of Writing.
Source consulted: Upswing Writing Lab
Guide created by: C. Jones 2/9/2021, E. Raley 6/16/2021
Revised by: B. McCoid 1/17/2024
The RVC Writing Center offers many resources to help you with these topics and all of your writing concerns. Titles of available resources can be found in the navigation bars along the left side of this page and/or by using the search bar. The Writing Center’s Resource Library can be accessed by using the following link:
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