Writing By Order Of Importance

Order of importance is one of the most frequently-employed organizing principles used in essays and informational pieces.  Because it provides the details of a subject in a manner that makes sense for many (a pyramid structure), it makes a lot of writing easier to follow (with the help of a grammar proofing software, of course).

This type of writing organization can be used in one two ways, either discussing the details from the most important to the least or the other way around.  Both approaches can work, depending on your overall intent for the material.

Most Important First

Using this structure means revealing the most significant information early on, filling in the rest of the details as the writing moves forward.  News pieces and magazine articles that use “order of importance” as their writing structure usually flow this way.  Most opinion essays are also arranged in this manner, drawing the reader in with the most impactful ideas upfront.

The “most important,” of course,  can vary, depending on the subject.  When writing a profile of a personality, for instance, you want to get the most remarkable details early to inform the reader why they should be reading about the individual.  An argument piece, on the other hand, will usually see the most convincing arguments offered up right along the top.

Least Important First

Some writers like to employ this method when writing a negative piece, easing readers into the bad features of a product or reporting an investigative piece without shocking at the onset.  It can also be employed with the most significant detail acting as a twist – one that shifts the whole perspective into your argument, while the reader teeters in the brink towards its entirety.

How To Use Sentence Connectors

Once you get a good handle on writing simple sentences in English, it’s time to take it a step further by expressing yourself in more complex ways.  While you can successfully write pieces that “make sense” using purely simple constructs, it’s hardly the way we actually speak, for real.

To properly represent natural-sounding English in your writing, you’ll need to use the increasingly complex constructs we use in everyday language, apart from adhering to proper grammar rules (which a grammar checker should easily afford you).  The easiest way to do that is to learn how to combine two sentences together by use of a connector.

Sentence connectors are employed to link ideas between two simple sentences, providing coherence to paragraphs and making your writing appear more sophisticated.  For the most part, they are used to represent the relationship between two complete statements.

For the most part, sentence connectors will establish the following relationships:

Logical order. Sentence connectors that show order include “in addition,” “firstly,” “furthermore,” “also” and other similar terms.

Significance. Sentence connectors, such as “most importantly,” “above all” and “essentially,” show the order of importance among different subjects.

Contrast. Connecting terms, such as “however,” “in comparison” and “on the contrary,” can highlight the difference between two subjects.

Cause and effect. This type of sentence connector, which terms such as “therefore,” “thus” and “hence,” show a cause and effect relationship between two subjects.

Comparison. When comparing the subjects of two statements, you can use connectors such as “similarly,” “likewise” and “also.”


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