An anaphora is built out of parts that recur across languages, centuries and churches that have not been in communion for a thousand years. It opens with a dialogue: the president greets the people, tells them to lift up their hearts, and invites them to give thanks. There follows the preface, a thanksgiving for creation and salvation which in the Western rites varies with the season, and it runs into the sanctus, the acclamation of the seraphim from the sixth chapter of Isaiah, sung by everyone. After the sanctus the prayer continues to the account of the institution, then to the anamnesis, the remembrance which states what the church is recalling as it obeys the command to do this. An invocation asks God to send the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people. Intercessions name the living, the dead, the local bishop and the church at large. A doxology closes the prayer and the congregation answers amen, which is its consent and its part of the action.
Two structural differences separate the families. The Roman rite places its invocation of the Spirit before the institution narrative, and the Byzantine and other eastern rites place it after, which is why the two traditions have located the consecration in different moments. And the Alexandrian family puts its intercessions early, inside the preface, where the Antiochene family puts them near the end.
The prayer is spoken by one voice and belongs to the whole assembly, which is why the amen at the end is treated in the ancient sources as the essential response and not a formality.