在修辞学和作文中，分类是一种段落或文章发展的方法，在这种方法中，作者将具有共同特征的人、对象或思想安排成类或组。分类文章通常包括示例和其他支持细节，这些示例和细节按照类型、种类、分段、类别或整体的一部分进行组织。

关于分类的意见

"The primary support in classification consists of the categories that serve the purpose of the classification...The categories in classification are the 'piles' into which the writer sorts a topic (the items to be classified). These categories will become the topic sentences for the body paragraphs of the essay...The supporting details in classification are examples or explanations of what is in each category. The examples in classification are the various items that fall within each category. These are important because readers may not be familiar with your categories."—From "Real Essays With Readings" by Susan Anker

在介绍性段落中使用分类法

"Americans can be divided into three groups—smokers, nonsmokers and that expanding pack of us who have quit. Those who have never smoked don't know what they're missing, but former smokers, ex-smokers, reformed smokers can never forget. We are veterans of a personal war, linked by that watershed experience of ceasing to smoke and by the temptation to have just one more cigarette. For almost all of us ex-smokers, smoking continues to play an important role in our lives. And now that it is being restricted in restaurants around the country and will be banned in almost all indoor public places in New York State starting next month, it is vital that everyone understand the different emotional states cessation of smoking can cause. I have observed four of them; and in the interest of science I have classified them as those of the zealot, the evangelist, the elect and the serene. Each day, each category gains new recruits."—From "Confessions of an Ex-Smoker" by Franklin Zimring

用分类法建立场所

"Each of Jamaica's four great gardens, although established along similar principles, has acquired its own distinctive aura. Hope Gardens, in the heart of Kingston, evokes postcard pictures from the 1950s of public parks, gracious and vaguely suburban and filled with familiar favorites—lantana and marigolds—as well as exotics. Bath has retained its Old World character; it is the easiest to conjure as it must have looked in Bligh's time. Cinchona of the clouds is otherworldly. And Castleton, the garden established to replace Bath, fleetingly evokes that golden age of Jamaican tourism, when visitors arrived in their own yachts—the era of Ian Fleming and Noel Coward, before commercial air travel unloaded ordinary mortals all over the island."—From "Captain Bligh's Cursed Breadfruit" by Caroline Alexander

使用分类建立字符：示例1

"Local TV interviewers come in two varieties. One is a bulimic blond person with a deviated septum and a severe cognitive disorder who went into broadcasting because he or she was too emotionally disturbed for telephone sales work. The other variety is suave, sagacious, grossly overqualified for the job, and too depressed to talk to you. Good local TV people are always depressed because their field is so crowded."—From "Book Tour" by P.J. O'Rourke

使用分类建立字符：示例2

"The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; (5) those who know and distinguish."—From "A Dictionary of Modern Usage" by H.W. Fowler and Ernest Gowers

著名的分类段落和研究论文

• 塞缪尔·约翰逊的《对话》
• E.B.怀特的《纽约来了》
• D.H.劳伦斯的《给她一个模式》
• 比尔·奈的《打断别人的男人》
• 弗朗西斯·培根的《研究之旅》
• 詹姆斯·哈维·罗宾逊的《论各种思维》
• H.G.威尔斯的《争吵的乐趣》
• 爱德华·埃弗雷特的《握手》

来源

• 安克尔，苏珊。《带阅读材料的真实文章》，第三版。贝德福德/圣马丁。2009
• 齐姆林，富兰克林。“一位前吸烟者的自白”，《新闻周刊》。1987年4月20日
• 亚历山大，卡罗琳。“布莱船长被诅咒的面包果。”史密森学会。2009年9月
• 奥罗克，P.J.“书之旅”，在“年龄和诡计，击败年轻、天真和糟糕的发型。”大西洋月刊。1995
• 福勒，H.W。；戈尔斯，欧内斯特。《现代英语用法词典》，第二版。牛津大学出版社。1965