When deciding on how to organize a paper, most writers are best served turning their attention to on an outline. We’ve discussed that type of work many times before, as we’ve been huge fans of outlining as a way to streamline the work when you’re actually writing.
Outlines can be formal or informal. Regardless of how “official” you decide to make its presentation, your outline is often the ideal platform to design how the organization of your paper is going to be made, just as a writing software is the standard for quick and efficient proofreading.
The first organization question you’ll have to answer is whether you will state your final position and overall claim at the beginning or the end of the essay. Both approaches do have value, bringing their own sets of advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I’d recommend with sticking them in the beginning, as having your primary points up front helps ease the job for readers.
For evaluation papers, in particular, four organizational approaches are the most common:
- Organization by criteria, where you group each paragraph by the specific qualities of the topic that you want to discuss.
- Organization by comparison and contrast, where you put the main subject under scrutiny next to other different, but somewhat related, items.
- Organization by chronological order, where you follow a time-defined sequence.
- Organization by causal analysis, where you show cause-and-effect as your primary method of discovery.
