Writer's Guidelines: Cause and Effect

1. Determine whether your topic should mainly inform or mainly persuade, and use the right rone for your purpose and audience.

2. Decide whether to concentrate on causes, effects, or a combination of causes and effects. Most paragraphs will focus only on causes or only on effects. May short essays will discuss causes and effects buy will use one as the framework for the piece. Atypical basic outline might look like this

Topic sentence of paragraph or thesis of essay

I. Cause or effect 1
II. cause or effect 2
III. cause or effect 3

3. Do not conclude that something is an effect merely because it follows something else..

4. Emphasize your main concern(s)-causes, effects, or a combination-by repeating key words such as cause, reason, effect, result, consequence, and outcome.

5. Causes and effects can be primary or secondary, immediate or remote.

6. The order of causes and effects in your paper may be based on time, spacem emphasis, or a combination.

Source: Brandon, Lee. Brandon, Kelly. Paragraphs and Essays