thundering, booming confidently b. trembling, shaking noticeably

When writers write, they generally use one of several basic organizational patterns. These basic patterns help writers organize their ideas effectively. The four most common patterns are: ■ chronological order ■ order of importance ■ comparison and contrast ■ cause and effect C HRONOLOGICAL O RDER When writers use time to organize their ideas, it is called chronological order. They describe events in the order in which they did happen, will happen, or should happen. Much of what you read is organized in this way. Historical texts, instructions and procedures, and essays about personal experiences usually use this structure as the overall organizing principle. The practice passage about bicycles, for example, follows this pat- tern. Passages organized by chronology provide us with lots of clues to help us follow the passage of time. They use transitional words and phrases to guide us through the text. The transitions help us see when things happened and in what order and help us follow along when the passage shifts from one period of time to another. Transitional words and phrases keep events linked together in the proper order. Here is a list of some of the most common chronological transitions: first, second, third, etc. before after next now then when as soon as immediately suddenly soon during while meanwhile later in the meantime at last eventually finally afterward O RDER OF I MPORTANCE This organizational pattern arranges ideas by rank instead of time. That is, the first idea isn’t what happened first; it’s the idea that’s most or least important. Writers can start with the most important idea and then work down the line to the least important. Or they can do the opposite: start with the least important idea and build up to the one that’s most important. Organizing ideas from most important to least important puts the most essential information first. Writ- ers often do this when they are offering advice or when they want to be sure readers get the most important information right away. Newspaper articles, for example, generally use this structure. They begin with the most important information the who, what, when, where, and why about the event so readers don’t have to read the whole article to get those facts. When writers move from least to most important, they save their most important idea or piece of infor- mation for last. Writers often use this approach when they are presenting an argument. That’s because this kind of structure is usually more convincing than a most-to-least organization. The more controversial the argument, the more important this structure. In an argument, you need to build your case piece by piece and – R E A D I N G C O M P R E H E N S I O N S K I L L S – 3 9