?How Do I Write a Classification/Division Essay
A classification or division essay takes what you learned about using
examples in the example/illustration essay and applies those examples more
specifically to a thesis. In other words, you should be using examples that
demonstrate the form of the composition: either how ideas or objects may
be grouped into categories (classifying) or how an idea or object may be
separated into parts (dividing).
:Things to Watch For
Classification
Think of classification as a way of categorizing. There are four food
groups. Let’s write about them and (here comes the thesis) what they
:contribute to proper nutrition
¸ What you’re doing when you classify is finding the common
denominators among ideas or objects that are different: What do
eggs, ice cream, and Swiss cheese have in common? Well, monster
cholesterol, for one. But is there classification there? This might be
a topic that works better as cause-effect. Be sure you don’t stray
beyond the point of your assigned rhetorical form unless your
.professor has allowed this
¸ .Once the classifications are under way, make sure they don’t overlap
¸ Don’t omit an important category (all classifications must completely classify
(the topic or run the risk of merely being isolated examples
¸ Make sure that they remain logical.
:Example
What’s wrong with this picture? The classifications are of houses: brick, frame,
ranch, and big. Big doesn’t fit. Stucco fits. Adobe fits. Big belongs to a different
basis of classification—size rather than style.
Division
Division, or analysis, breaks a thing down into parts so that (typically in a later
essay like the argument/position paper), they can be restructured to form
something new, or a synthesis (can you spot an important six-letter word hiding
(? "within “synthesis
¸ Every time you outline, you do a division, breaking the essay down into
all of its constituent parts (as in classification, failure to discuss all the parts
(results in an incomplete division paper, stocked only with isolated examples
¸ While classifications are separate, even disparate items brought
together under some common denominator, divisions are much more
explicitly parts of a single whole
Example
Discussing the key components of a championship sports team, for instance, would
be a division; for that matter, discussing the components of a successful division
.essay is also division
:Classification Structure
I. Introduction
· States thesis
II. Body
· Identifies, in separate paragraphs, the various categories, with examples
III. Conclusion
· Restates the categories of the thesis and, as a significance—or answer to
the question “so what?” implied in any composition, stresses the value of
this classification system
:Division Structure
I. Introduction
· States thesis (idea or object to be analyzed, and to what end)
II. Body
· Renders the parts, in separate paragraphs, with examples and with
transitional materials to provide a sense of their inter-relatedness
III. Conclusion
· Restates the parts of the thesis and (the significance—see Classification
outline, part III) attempts a synthesis or new understanding of the
constituent parts
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