[This post takes 16.7 minutes to read.]
Today I’m thinking about the act of organization in writing and how it can function like a recipe from designing through drafting and review/editing.
I have developed and advocate for a radically reader-focused approach to teaching workplace writing (what’s usually called Business/Technical/Professional Writing in colleges), an approach that focuses on very specific skills for
generating useful information for a real reader who needs the information (not a teacher),
organizing the information logically and usually “deductively”—main point first,
using document design to make documents easy for readers to navigate, and
crafting a clear, concise, plain English style through management of paragraphs, sentences, word choices, and mechanics.
I call this approach the HOCs and LOCs approach: HOCs=Higher Order Concerns (CONTENT, ORGANIZATION, DOCUMENT DESIGN); LOCs=Lower Order Concerns (Paragraphs, Sentences, Word Choices, Mechanics). I think of this as a systems approach to thinking about and teaching workplace writing.
The usefulness and readability of any document is generated through these 7 HOCs & LOCs.
In this post, I’m considering the “system” of ORGANIZATION: beyond mere genre requirements (letters, memos, proposals, etc.), what underlying organizational principles should students learn, organizational principles that would apply to any kind of workplace document?
I see the #1 job of any workplace writer as generating useful content for a real reader who needs the information. I have written several posts about specific techniques for doing this, primarily knowing and answering the reader’s questions about the issue in question.
I see the #2 job of any workplace writer as presenting that useful information as helpfully as possible. The first step in presenting useful information helpfully is understanding principles of organization.
I’m not so interested here in the organizational requirements of particular kinds of workplace writing—the requirements, for instance, for writing an indirect letter, a memo, responding to an RFP, writing a white paper or a proposal, etc., etc. These specific organizational requirements are easily learned, but they do change from one workplace setting to another. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with familiarizing students with the basics of genre requirements.
However, I am interested in showing students how organization functions inside any document—from planning through drafting and revising/editing.
Organization is more than merely the “logical arrangement” of information. Yes, it sets up a structure, the relationship between the main point and the evidence that develops and supports the main point (in a whole document, a section, or even in a paragraph or sentence), but how is this structure determined? And, yes, it aids coherence/flow, but how does it do that?
You can see the MACRO-organization in the outline of a document: I, II, III, A, B, C, 1, 2, 3. You can see the MICRO-organization in the syntax of sentences in terms of subordination/coordination, so-called “right-branching” sentence structure, “mid-branching” or “left-branching,” sentence structure, or any combination of these. (see: https://qcgwrite.com/blog/2016/12/26/fun-with-sentences-better-writing)
In this post I want to spotlight for you
how the act of organizing information requires writers to inventory the content to make sure all necessary bits of information are on board,
how organization relies on understanding how readers read and anticipates the reading process to shape the document, and
how organization offers the largest tool for creating the best emphasis throughout a document.
My definition of “effective writing” is useful information emphasized in the best way to be helpful to a real reader…who really needs the real information.
Organization is an EMPHATIC DEVICE.
WITHIN THE HOCs & LOCs systems approach to writing, there are many other specific tools for creating helpful emphasis, including how the document is designed (graphics included), chunked into sections that are labeled with headings, “paragraphed,” “sentenced,” and, you might say, “inflected”—bent to the reader’s ear and sensibility and the occasion. These are all EMPHATIC DEVICES.
How does the act of organizing information require writers to inventory the content to make sure all necessary bits of information are on board?
At a very high level, organization is much like a recipe in cooking. A recipe should list all ingredients. It should also show the step-by-step process for combining and cooking those ingredients. In my experience, writers often skip the first part—inventorying all the necessary ingredients/information.
In this aspect, organization is the all-important checklist on the content that’s been gathered. It is the process of understanding what information needs to be gathered, given the ISSUE* in question. [*Workplace writing is always ISSUE-DRIVEN. An ISSUE is an area of shared interest between writer and reader. Simply stated, it’s the reason the writer is writing and the reader is reading.]
At this stage, ORGANIZATION is a technique for what rhetoricians call INVENTION—finding and developing the right topics for the document. Therefore, organization begins at design (often called planning).
I created a technique, QUESTION FACTORING, that helps writers see more clearly what information is needed, both in the planning stages and in the review/editing stages. (see:https://qcgwrite.com/blog/2016/12/28/how-to-see-the-invisible-half-of-content-making-the-visible-even-more-visible)
Very briefly, content comes not from the writer’s knowledge, expertise, or research. Content comes from the reader’s appropriate questions about the ISSUE in question. Question Factoring sees each document/section/paragraph/sentence as an ANSWER to a reader question and discovers the question that answer is actually addressing. It then asks, is this the right question to be addressing at this moment in the document?
A writer (or team of writers) can use Question Factoring (QF) to plan a document. The writer finds all the appropriate questions the intended reader should have about the issue in question. Thus the writer begins by first “factoring” the ISSUE into the best questions to successfully probe the issue for the reader.
A writer can use QF to review an outline or a draft. Does the draft address all the reader’s appropriate questions (and in the most helpful order, an activity we’ll discuss in the next two sections)?
The ultimate goal of any document is to answer all the questions the real reader has about the issue/topic in question. In the planning stage, writers should consider creating an initial question outline that organizes all the reader’s appropriate questions in some logical order. This order is the order you’d use if you were talking to the reader face to face about the issue. What would you say first and why? How would the reader respond? What would you say next? Etc.
At this early stage, a writer probably won’t know all the reader’s appropriate questions. As the research into the questions progresses, writers often get “smarter” about which questions are appropriate to discuss. A beginning question outline usually has questions that aren’t so important and lacks other questions that are important.
Organizing and content development go hand in hand. As the writer learns new information, that new information can change how the overall information is organized.
So, realizing that CONTENT really comes from your reader’s appropriate questions about the issue/topic in question, be sure to begin with an inventory of those questions, just as a recipe lists the necessary ingredients. Just remember that as cooking begins, you may need a little more or less salt or other ingredient than you had planned.
2. how DOES organization relY on understanding how readers read and anticipate the reading process to shape the document?
I just mentioned that organization is usually best when it’s ordered like a face-to-face conversation with the intended reader. The writer should imagine what the reader would want to know first and, after that, what the reader would want to know next, and so on.
You can use organization to create a super structure for any document if you understand that readers read by asking 3 big questions. If the writer organizes the document with these three questions in mind, the reader will navigate the information more easily.
When we read (anything at all), we make our way through the information by asking 3 questions:
First, WHAT IS THIS & WHY SHOULD I CARE? (Yes, that’s a two-part question, but the two parts are joined at the hip and can’t be separated.)
Next, WHAT’S THE “STORY”?
And, finally, WHAT, if anything, IS NEXT?
Think about how you read your email. First you discover what the email is and if there’s any reason you should care. If there’s not, you hit DELETE. If there is, then you read to discover “the story.” As you read, you may discover that you actually don’t care and hit DELETE at any time. By the end of the email, you want to know what you need to do or what the writer will do, or what needs to be done—if anything at all.
This is how you read a newspaper. It’s how you read magazines. It’s how you “read” the traffic ahead of you as you drive on the road. We are constantly “reading” our environment. We use these three MACRO-QUESTIONS to move from one decision to the next.
The reader’s 3 MACRO-QUESTIONS should match the 3 parts of a document:
INTRODUCTION: Tell the reader why you’re writing (if they don’t know) and why they should care (if they don’t already know). Then preview the main topics that will be discussed to show the reader what the voyage through your document will look like. Use headings to visually indicate where each heading begins.
DISCUSSION: Discuss the main topics previewed above. Keep in mind that every topic and sub-topic is an answer to an important reader question about the issue/topic in question (see above). This is where the question outline from planning is fully developed.
ENDING: Tell the reader what, if anything, will or should happen next. If nothing, thank the reader for their attention. Keep in mind that the “ending” is not a conclusion. Readers are far too busy, distracted, and annoyed (by having to read something) to wait for conclusions until the end. Conclusions should go first in the discussion. Certainly never end by restating what you’ve already said—unless the document is really long. Then that restatement should come first as an executive summary of some kind. RECOMMENDATIONS are often at the end because they state what needs to happen next.
Most documents longer than a single screen/page should be organized around these three MACRO-QUESTIONS every reader has.
3. How does organization offer the largest tool for creating the best emphasis throughout a document?
An effective piece of writing is defined as a document that’s appropriately emphatic. That is, the document emphasizes key information for the reader and makes it easy to find.
Here’s it’s important to realize how territory is important in a document.
What comes first and last—that territory a reader sees first and last—is more emphatic than what comes in the middle, which is literally embedded/buried, thus deemphasized. But I’d argue that readers (of workplace documents) are so busy, distracted, and annoyed (at having to read in the first place) that what comes first is far more important (at least initially) than what comes last (where the reader may never go).
So the hierarchy of emphasis is
What comes first is most emphatic .
What comes last is next-most emphatic
What comes in the middle is least emphatic.
And this is a fractal concept. This hierarchy of emphasis applies to whole documents, major sections, sub-sections, and paragraphs. (It probably applies to sentences as well, as it’s been proven that right-branching sentences are easier for readers to understand than left-branching sentences, which are easier for readers to understand than mid-branching sentences.)
Be sure to feature the main information up front. SO many times I read documents that begin with background information, which buries the lede, as journalists say.
The late Stephen Covey used to say, THE MAIN THING IS TO KEEP THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING!
How you organize your documents in terms of the relationship between MAIN POINTS and the information required to support those points is important to keep in mind. Don’t make readers put a lot of effort into finding the information they’re most interested in.
The writer’s job is to work hard so the reader doesn’t have to.
KEY TAKE AWAYS
Understand that organization and content go together. Organization starts with planning and carries through the drafting and revising processes. Think of organization as a recipe: it should list key ingredients and allow the reader to see how all those ingredients go together.
Understand that readers “read” by asking three MACRO-QUESTIONS. Your document’s three main parts (introduction, discussion, ending) should address those MACRO-QUESTIONS for your reader.
Organize information so the most important information comes first. Be careful not to bury key information in the middles of documents/sections/paragraphs/sentences.
YOU CAN FIND OUT ALL ABOUT THE HOC’S & LOC’S “SYSTEMS APPROACH” TO WRITING (AND TEACHING WRITING) IN MY TEXTBOOK, MASTERING WORKPLACE WRITING, available through Amazon (Prime):
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Workplace-Writing-Second-critical-thinking/dp/0998498203
If you teach writing, ask me for a free examination copy and a free Teacher’s Guide.
YOU CAN ALSO EXPLORE THESE HOC’s & LOC’s PRINCIPLES in my 200-page e-book (M-A-N-Y PICTURES), mindful writing at work ($9.97):
https://gumroad.com/l/mindfulwriting