Chapter 13 Summary - The Bedford Researcher

Mike Palmquist, in chapter 13 of his book The Bedford Researcher, describes organizing, both the organization of your argument and your document itself. He goes over which organizing patterns you should choose; how you can arrange your argument; and how you can create an outline. What organizing patterns should you use is the first thing Palmquist talks in detail about. He says you can do one, or more, of the following patterns, chronology; description; definition; cause/effect; process explanation; pro/con; multiple perspectives; comparison/contrast; strengths/weaknesses; costs/benefits; and finally, problem/solution. No matter which of these you pick Palmquist also says that your pattern choice will reflect your role and purpose as a writer in your argument and paper. In the next part of chapter 13, what Palmquist goes over is how you can arrange your argument. He says that Labeling your evidence; grouping your evidence; using clustering; and using mapping are all strategic ways of presenting your argument, and will down the road help you even more with your outline. The last part of the chapter is about how you can create an outline. Basically there are two different types of outlines, informal and formal, Palmquist takes a bit to describe them but they are fairly straight forward. He also mentions that outlines are extremely helpful when you get to the drafting stage of your paper. In general, all of these organizing tools fit and work really well together, which helps you do your job of writing your paper.