A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th edition - Kate L. Turabian 2007

Order your reasons
Planning a first draft
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

Finding a good order for the sections of a report can be the hardest part of planning. When you assembled your argument, you may not have put your reasons in any particular order (one benefit of a storyboard). But when you plan a draft, you must impose on them some order that best meets your readers' needs. That is not easy, especially when you're writing on a new topic in a new field.

When you're not sure how best to order your reasons, consider these options:

Comparison and contrast. This is the form you'd choose if you were comparing two or more entities, concepts, or objects.

But there are two ways to compare and contrast, and one is usually better than the other. If, for example, you were comparing whether Hopi masks have more religious symbolism than Inuit masks, you might decide to devote the first half of your paper to Inuit masks and the second to Hopi masks. This organization, however, too often results in a pair of unrelated summaries. Try breaking the topics into their conceptual parts. In the case of masks, it would be their symbolic representation, design features, stages of evolution, and so on.

There are several other standard ways to order your ideas. Two focus on the subject matter:

Chronological. This is the simplest: earlier-to-later or cause-to-effect.

Part-by-part. If you can break your topic into its constituent parts, you can deal with each part in turn, but you must still order those parts in some way that helps readers understand them.

You can also organize the parts from the point of view of your readers' ability to understand them:

Short to long, simple to complex. Most readers prefer to deal with less complex issues before they work through more complex ones.

More familiar to less familiar. Most readers prefer to read what they know about before they read what they don't.

Less contestable to more contestable. Most readers move more easily from what they agree with to what they don't.

Less important to more important (or vice versa). Readers prefer to read more important reasons first, but those reasons may have more impact when they come last.

Earlier understanding as a basis for later understanding. Readers may have to understand some events, principles, definitions, and so on before they understand another thing.

Often, these principles cooperate: what readers agree with and most easily understand might also be shortest and most familiar. But they may also conflict: reasons that readers understand most easily might be the ones they reject most quickly; what you think is your most decisive reason might to readers seem least familiar. No rules here, only principles of choice.

Whatever order you choose, it should reflect your readers' needs, not the order that the material seems to impose on itself (as in an obvious compare-contrast organization), and least of all the order in which ideas occurred to you.