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Organization

Here's a picture of your ideas for your paper:

All over the place! If your brain is like mine (God help you), that's probably how thoughts and ideas occur to you. The problem is, if you're going to try to express those ideas to someone else, especially if you're going to write your ideas, you're probably going to need to do some organization:

An outline can help you get from the first picture to the second--anything from a little sketch on the back of your notebook to a full-fledged, I-A-1-a outline, like your high school English teacher may have required. (Don't ask me what's up with the "If there's an A there has to be a B" thing; I don't have a clue what that was all about, and I hated it too.)

But there's more. Most readers need some help seeing how you get from one place to the next, even when it's pretty obvious. This is where what I call "signposting" comes in. Your paper is like a highway, and the reader/driver needs a map, or at least some clear road signs:

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

Another way of distinguishing Democrats from Republicans is to smell them.

(End squares; circles ahead!)

Dorm food sucks in countless ways, but its lack of variety, its smell, and its pasty consistency are probably the most important.

(Watch for triangles, circles, and squares!)

As if lack of daycare and low pay weren't enough of a burden for a single mother, she also has to deal with being a social outcast.

(Squares ended a while ago, remember; circles just ended; triangles ahead!)

Awkward and Heavy-Handed Signposting

Signs shouldn't draw attention to themselves!

Numbered points are occasionally effective, but more frequently, there's a more artful way to move between points. Think of your high school speech class, and how nauseating it was to listen to "Fourth, drugs are addictive." (Fifth, your speech sucks.) Here are some potential problems with numbered points:

First of all, blah blah blah.
Secondly, blah blah blah.
Third, blah blah blah.
Number Four, blah blah blah.

A seventeenth reason for joining the Peace Corps is blah blah blah.

Really self-conscious signs are awkward:

I've told you three reasons for blah blah blah. The fourth is blah blah blah.

As we've seen, (a whole bunch of blah blah blah repeating the blah blah blah already in the paper).

In conclusion, blah blah blah.

To summarize, blah blah blah.