These words refer to imposing a shape upon a mass of details in accordance with some plan or system. Organize indicates the most thoroughgoing shaping of materials of any of these words, since it can point to the achieving of either sequential or spatial form, or both.

• He organized his speech so that his most telling points came last; The architect organized the shopping arcades round a central plaza.

In any case, while the word can imply the moving about of given items, it more often goes beyond this to suggest an altering of each and the fusing or fitting of part to part to form a new self-contained unity. A common use applies to the shaping of work systems: a business organized into two separate but interlocking companies; an administrator good at organizing new government programmes from scratch; a union drive to organize unaffiliated workers.

Arrange most often indicates the placing of items according to a plan, but without necessarily altering the items themselves: the job of arranging his vast library by subject and author. While the word stresses sequence, a more complex spatial arrangement may be indicated: the painter’s genius at arranging the graphic elements of his work within an overall design. A greater re-shaping of details is also suggested when the word refers to the creation of music to accompany a melody or singer: the composer who arranged her songs for voice and orchestra. Order can point to a thoroughgoing shaping and re-shaping of elements, like organize , but the word in this context is more formal and can be confused with its more common use referring to the requisition of something: catalogues for ordering spare parts. Nevertheless, the word can function, especially in an aesthetic context, to refer to one aspect of the creative process: his ability to order the most disparate facets of contemporary life into a harmonious whole.

Classify refers to a categorizing process that at its most mechanical stands in sharp contrast to the creative acts that organize and order suggest. Classify can, however, sometimes refer to the creating of the categories themselves: Linnaeus’s obsolete binomial system for classifying animal and plant life. At its mildest, the word can indicate the identifying of examples according to existing types, possibly with no actual arranging or re-arranging whatsoever: a walk on which he noted and classified every tree he came across. Sort suggests the selection of items according to type; this process is closely related to the categorizing process indicated by classify . Often classify indicates a previous evaluative judgement and sort the disposing of items according to this evaluation: He sorted out the books he had earlier classified as worth saving. Marshal , the most specific of these words, serves as an intensification of arrange . In this case, items are brought together and ordered for greatest efficiency or for the most forceful effect possible: She marshalled example after example of job discrimination in her decisive statement before the Arbitration Court. At its most literal, the word refers to the manoeuvring of troops to greatest military advantage: an order to marshal troops on both sides of the mountain pass.