Organizing a paper the right way is a critical step. Even when it seems like you are being clear, a reader may not understand your point. This is why you need to know how to organize your research paper. This ensures you are communicating clearly with anyone who may read your paper.
Organization Creates Clarity
When you consider how to organize information for a research paper, remember that your goal is to create clarity. You want to walk the reader through your thought process. By introducing your ideas in the thesis and summarizing them in the conclusion, the reader grasps the main point of the paper. Finally, since they know exactly what you are trying to say, you communicate the same idea to every person that picks up your paper. This is the reason that teachers are so strict about writing style.
Organize Throughout the Process
Think about a messy bedroom. If you go a week without cleaning it, the mess continues to grow until it is impossible. Likewise, when you write an entire paper without taking the time to organize anything, it is a mess. Keep your facts with the appropriate sources. You should also use an outline to help organize your main ideas and supporting details. By doing this, you will write the best paper possible.
How Do You Organize a Research Paper?
As you consider the best way to organize your research paper, consider these critical steps:
- Step 1: Organize your introductory paragraph.
- Step 2: Organize the Major Points
- Step 3: Organize the Individual Body Paragraphs
- Step 4: Organize the Conclusion
You should have enough information to get the reader’s attention of your topic. Once they have a general idea of what you are talking about, you will introduce the thesis. The thesis links to the topic sentence of each main paragraph.
Writing an outline is one of the best ways to create order in your paper. As you think about how to organize your research paper, consider which supporting details should be group to support a main point. Each main point should be the topic of a body paragraph. By ensuring these are in the right place, your writing is orderly.
When you are writing a chronological paper like something for history class, it can be obvious that you want to introduce your ideas according to a timeline. For other topics, however, the organization pattern is not so clear. It does not always matter how ideas are introduced. If you would like, write each of your paragraphs on a separate sheet of paper. Move these sheets around and read them in different orders to see how it would be best to organize the body paragraphs.
As you consider how to organize a research paper, keep in mind that your conclusion is the place to tie everything up. While the thesis statement is at the end of the introductory paragraph, it should be toward the beginning of the conclusion paragraph. Once you tie all your ideas together, include a section where you leave an impact. State what impact my papers have, what the major point of it was, or how the reader can take action on your topic.
Now that you know how to organize my research paper, you should know how to present your ideas clearly to the reader. Organization improves communication. It takes the reader through your thought processes, helping them understand your viewpoint. It also ensures that every person who reads your paper has the same take away. By following the steps above, you should always be able to communicate your point.