A Recipe

From: Raymond, James C. Moves Writers Make. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.

Think of a group of people or things you happen to know well: your friends, perhaps, or your relatives, or musical instruments, or varieties of poetry. Then classify the individuals in the group into categories that make sense. Remember, though, that not just any classification will result in an interesting paper. You will have to discover a division that reveals something that would otherwise be obscure to your readers, or a classification that somehow makes sense of what would otherwise seem random and vaguely related individual instances (120).

DRAFTING--A Recipe for Writing Classification

Two things are essential to making a classification essay interesting: First, you have to find a classification you care about—one that reveals something interesting about the subject matter. The second is to do something with each classification—for example, to define it, or describe it, or tell a story about it.

Here is a recipe for writing a classification essay:

1. If you subject is one that can be best understood by examining its parts (e.g., the parts of a flower or the parts of an engine), you are writing a "division" paper. If your subject is best understood by placing it in the context of other, related subjects (e.g., twelve types of roses or seven kinds of optical illusions), you are writing a classification paper.

2. Once you choose a topic, see if you can say something general about it in a sentence that includes a plural noun, preferably one with a number in front of it—for example,

"There are nine kinds of friends," or "Nuclear reactors have three major components."

[“Successful students typically cultivate three [or five] key characteristics.” ]

3. Write the parts or categories on separate pieces of paper and arrange the pieces in the sequence that will work best for the topic: either a logical sequence, a spatial sequence, or perhaps a sequence in which you group similar observations together, saving the best for last to maintain the interest of your readers.

4. Develop each part or category by describing, narrating, exemplifying, or using any other strategies (covered in Chapter 5 of the Holt Handbook). [See Hacker, C4-c]

5. After you've selected and arranged your details, add an introduction and an ending.

(Holt Handbook, Chapter 6f).

6. Show a draft to fellow students in a formal or informal workshop, and see if your strategies are having the effects you want them to have. Use the checklist [below] to focus your discussion. (142-43)