I
t’s a scientifically proven fact: People remember most what they learn
first and
last in a given session. Writ-
ers have instinctively known this for a long time. That’s why many pieces of writing are organized not in
chronological
order but by order of importance.
Imagine again that the writer is like an architect. How would this type of writer arrange the rooms? By hier-
archy. A
hierarchy is a group of things arranged by rank or order of importance. In this
type of organizational pat-
tern,
hierarchy, not chronology, determines order. Thus, this architect would lay the rooms out like so: When you
walk in the front door, the first room you encounter would be the president’s office, then the vice president’s, then
the assistant vice president’s, and so on down to the lowest ranking worker. Or, vice versa, the
architect may choose
for you to meet the least important employee first, the one with the least power in the company. Then the next,
and the next, until at last, you reach the president.
Likewise, in writing, ideas may be arranged in order of importance. In this pattern, which idea comes first?
Not the one that
happened first, but the one that is
most, or
least, important.
L E S S O N
Order of
Importance
L E S S O N S U M M A R Y
Continuing your study of the
structure of reading material, this lesson
shows you how writers use order of importance—from least to most
important or from most to least important.
Understanding this commonly
used structure improves your reading comprehension by helping you
see what’s most important in a piece of writing.
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