Plain structure

By facilitating the readers’ task, you increase the likelihood that they will actually read your work. One of the writer’s priorities is to organise content so the reader spots and grasps the important information as quickly as possible and then finds it easy to navigate through the rest of the document. You are not writing a novel. Get to the point and don’t use suspense.

Text composition models that work

A certain number of effective models exist for composing information. They can be mixed, matched and applied on any level: overall structure, chapters, paragraphs or even sentences. Varying your approach helps to keep reader attention.

The top-heavy triangle, or inverted pyramid, puts the most important information first – generally the conclusion – and follows it with lesser information in order of priority. Priorities must be established based on importance to the reader and on sustaining reader interest.

The problem -> cause -> solution approach, or situation -> complications/development -> resolution, first presents the dilemma, creating sufficient interest for the reader to read further to understand the causes and solutions.

Chronological order is very useful and logical, but not always effective at keeping the reader reading.

Questions and answers work very well to feed reader interest throughout a work.

Situation -> objective -> appraisal -> proposal works well for a policy brief.

Introduction -> discussion -> conclusions -> recommendations is yet another good overall model. Here, here, the introduction must have all the qualities of an effective lead.

Effective leads and conclusions

First sentences and paragraphs (of a section, a chapter or the entire book) are called the lead. They are by far the most important element in your text. They are your best chance to capture the readers’ attention and induce them to go further. Some say that if you can get people to read the first 350 words of anything, they’ll probably read as much as you want them to. So make the lead good.

A good lead gets to the point quickly: who, what, why, where, when, and how. It gives enough hard details to let the readers know why they should bother reading further. Coaxing works better than reason: make them inquisitive.

Beware of vague, empty words that clog beginnings, such as:

• This paper is intended to provide…
• Before discussing xxx it is important to define…
• In view of the fact that…
• In this next section, it is my intention to deal with…
• It follows from the foregoing that since the beginning of…
• Due to some degree to the fact that it is…

After the beginning, the next most important part is the end. A reader may skip everything in between and head straight for the conclusion. Make it clear, concise and pertinent. And make sure it happens in time: when you’ve said what you have to say, conclude. That is, don’t try the reader’s patience. It should be possible to read the introduction and conclusion together. There should be clear links between the two. Far too often conclusions have nothing whatsoever to do with what was the stated aim of the report. And far too often, conclusions stray back into discussion.

Cohesion

This is one of the classic sections that should be printed in red and all caps. Read it!

To facilitate reader comprehension, put together what belongs together, and do so on all levels: throughout the whole text, within paragraphs and in each sentence.

There are several ways to do this.

Use parallel construction. Present parallel ideas in parallel grammatical form, so each part of a sentence, section or list uses the same grammatical structure.

• Keep to one tense in summaries.
• Put similar ideas and details in similar constructions.
• Use parallel constructions in vertical lists.

Put things in the right place:

• Keep related words together.
• Put main ideas in main (independent) clauses, and subordinate the less important elements in the sentence to the more important.
• Place emphatic words and the most important information at the end of the sentence; in the middle, they’ll be swallowed up.

Monitor your modifiers. A modifier belongs close to the word it modifies. It becomes:

• misplaced when it seems to modify the wrong word: ‘Complete with footnotes, the author had provided his reader with some background information’ – the footnotes provide the reader with background information.
• squinting when ambiguous and can be applied equally to more than one term: ‘Writing clearly is difficult’ — this sentence could mean that it’s clearly difficult to write or that it’s difficult to write clearly;
• dangling if the term it should modify appears nowhere in the sentence: ‘After reading the original study, the article remains unconvincing’.