Academic Resources > Academic Support Center > Online Writing Lab

The Body of a Paper

After your spectacular introduction, you need to give evidence/details/information to support your thesis. This is the "guts" of your paper.

First, let's look at how you might organize that information. Here are a few suggestions.

• Process: paragraphs structured in chronological order
  
  
• Cause/Effect: paragraphs that indicate the causal relationships between things and events. Be very careful that you don't mistake coincidence with cause ("I washed my car so it rained!")
  
  
• Classification: paragraphs separate the material into major categories and then distinguish between them
  
  
• Increasing importance: paragraphs that build up to the most important point
  
  
• Comparison & Contrast: paragraphs that have a detailed account of similarities and differences. Generally, the more similar things are, the more you should concentrate on the differences. Additionally, these paragraphs can be organized in two ways. You can put all the similarities in one paragraph with the differences in another and then write a section comparing the groups of similarities and differences. Another way to organize comparison and contrast papers is to show both the similarities and differences of one point within one paragraph. This tends to work well with exegetical papers.
  
  
• Example: paragraphs that give specific information to support your main point

Once you've decided your organizational style, develop a working outline-a map of where your paper is going to go.

This all may seem like a lot of work. It's not. Some planning makes the drafting of a paper much easier in the long run.

printable version

Need Help? Just ASC.
Return to the ASC Home page.