Organizational patterns help you organize the body of your essay; or, in classical rhetoric, your [[confirmatio]]. They fall under the rhetorical canon of [[arrangement]]. You can give your reader a breakdown of your pattern veryexplicitly, with a [[partitio]], or more subtly, with [[subtle signals and metalanguage|subtle signals]]. Paragraph [[paragraph transition|transitions]] are also a good place to signal changes from section to section. This is especially important when you're not just producing a horrible [[5-paragraph essay]]. In real writing, every "section" or "main point" if much more than a single paragraph, so you need to think carefully about how you signal the transitions between those sections. ### The general thrust.... Most patterns actually follow a similar structure. That is, they use a spectrum _of some sort_ to organize the general thrust of the argument, and that spectrum is often some variation of simple/complex or known/unknown. Or, in other words, they switch from [[confirmatio]] to [[refutatio]] (since [[a refutatio isn't just a counterargument]]). ### Full list of patterns The following patterns are from [[The Essential Guide to Rhetoric (2018)]]. * Topical * Time * Places * Cause and Effect * Problem/Cause/Solution See also [[Podis et al 1990 - Identifying and Teaching Rhetorical Plans for Arrangement|Podis et al. 1990]] who cite the following from [[Edward P.J. Corbett]]'s [[The Little Rhetoric and Handbook (1977)]]\*: * General to Specific * Order by Importance * Familiar to Unfamiliar \* (Note that Corbett was technically talking about the orgnaization of individual paragraphs—not the structure of an entire article or the larger flow of sections.) Podis et al. also add the following "plans": - Obvious before remarkable (p. 431, 433) - Literal before Symbolic (p. 431, p. 437) - Explanation before Complication (p. 431) - Presentation before Refutation (p. 434) - Comparison/Contrast (p. 433) - Cause/Effect (p. 433) - Classification (p. 433) - Solvable before Unsolvable (p. 435) - Agreement before Disagreement (p. 436) - Likely before speculative (p. 437)