Organization: Writing Elements & Organization

When we talk about the writing elements that help with organization in professional writing, the first thing you’ll notice is that they’re the same ones that help with organization in any kind of writing.

Just like that essay on Emily Dickinson, your professional writing document will have three main sections that must move fluidly into each other and stay connected in order to produce a coherent whole document:

  • an introduction,
  • a body, and
  • a conclusion.

To help your reader understand the purpose of the document, locate information quickly, and navigate the text without getting lost along the way, incorporate several components that help establish organization.

Writing Elements That Help You Organize

There are four basic writing elements that you should use when organizing your documents:

  • a purpose statement
  • paragraphs
  • topic sentences
  • transitions

Purpose Statement

A purpose statement is to a professional writing document what a thesis statement is to a regular essay. It is a sentence identifying the purpose of the document, and it should appear either at the beginning or at the end of the first paragraph. For a complete discussion of the purpose statement, see Persuasion: Purpose.

Paragraphs

A paragraph is a distinct portion of text, set off by double-spacing or indentation (but not both), that usually focuses on a single topic. The key thing to remember about paragraphing a professional writing document is this: paragraphs should be much shorter than those found in a traditional essay.

Keep in mind that your readers are likely to be very busy and maybe even less than patient. If they pick up a document, and it is filled with long paragraphs, no matter how engaging or important the subject matter, they will probably dread reading it. Given that fact, you have to help them use your document effectively and efficiently. This means using visual tricks, like inserting more paragraph breaks, which will result in shorter paragraphs.

The traditional rule for writing paragraphs — one topic per paragraph — needs a bit of refining when you’re dealing with a professional writing document. The truth is that sometimes even a one-topic paragraph can be pretty long, and if your document has columns, a “regular” sized paragraph can become enormous when it is reduced from 7” in width down to 3”.  So you’ll want to break up one-topic paragraphs that get too long by simply inserting a new paragraph at a logical point.

How long should a paragraph be, then? There’s no one answer.  It helps to remember the “busy reader” concept:  the same amount of material presented two ways can look radically different.

The traditional rule for writing paragraphs — one topic per paragraph — needs a bit of refining when you’re dealing with a professional writing document. The truth is that sometimes even a one-topic paragraph can be pretty long, and if your document has columns, a “regular” sized paragraph can become enormous when it is reduced from 7” in width down to 3”.  So you’ll want to break up one-topic paragraphs that get too long by simply inserting a new paragraph at a logical point. How long should a paragraph be, then? There’s no one answer.  It helps to remember the “busy reader” concept:  the same amount of material presented two ways can look radically different.

 

The traditional rule for writing paragraphs — one topic per paragraph — needs a bit of refining when you’re dealing with a professional writing document.

The truth is that sometimes even a one-topic paragraph can be pretty long, and if your document has columns, a “regular” sized paragraph can become enormous when it is reduced from 7” in width down to 3”. 

So you’ll want to break up one-topic paragraphs that get too long by simply inserting a new paragraph at a logical point.

How long should a paragraph be, then? There’s no one answer.  It helps to remember the “busy reader” concept:  the same amount of material presented two ways can look radically different.

When you see the same information presented in two ways, two things should strike you:

  • the multiple paragraph style — aka, chunking — takes up more room on the page but
  • it looks like less information.

Visually, this paragraphing style tricks readers into thinking they are actually reading less information. So remember the value of chunking.

Topic Sentences

They are sentences or groups of sentences that tell your reader the focus of each paragraph or section. They act as a a signpost to help the reader navigate through the document. They should appear at the beginning of every paragraph.

Topic sentences are like purpose statements for each paragraph: they inform the reader about what’s coming up next, and they should be found early, usually as the first sentence.

They’re useful because most readers need to grasp the “big picture” early to efficiently process the information they’re reading. Topic sentences help keep your reader on track by explaining the direction the text is taking.

There are two basic forms a topic sentence can take:

Sentence

A topic sentence can be a simple declarative sentence, such as There are many ways to indicate the topic of a segment.

Such a sentence tells the reader a fact (there are many ways to do X) and clues him or her in to what will happen next: you are going on to explain those many ways.

Question

A topic sentence can be a question, such as In what ways can you indicate the topic of a segment? This signals that what will develop in the paragraph is the answer to the question just asked.

Topic sentences work cooperatively with transitions to ensure that each section of your document links to the next one.

Transitions

They provide movement or transition from one element to another: sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, section to section. They help link the various sections of your document together in a coherent chain of information. They should occur wherever needed.

Transitions are words, phrases, and even sentences that link together sections of your writing, whether those sections are actually sections (say, in a longer document), paragraphs, or even sentences.

Good transitional statements do two things:

  • They tell what the upcoming segment is about, thus serving as topic sentences.
  • They indicate the relationship of what is coming to what has just ended.  A transition can be as simple as First, Additionally, and Next or as complicated as an entire sentence.

You can write a transition in a number of ways:

Explicit Statement

Literally state you’re moving from one topic to another:  In our guidelines for handling ExBan, we have now completed our suggestions for guarding against accidental spills during transportation. We turn now to our guidelines for storing the product.

Look Forward

More subtly, use a word or phrase to allude to the previous discussion:  After we developed our hypothesis [refers to previous discussion], we were ready to design our experiment [looks ahead to next one].

Look Back

Include a reference to the previous section in a main clause rather than in an introductory phrase: We then designed an experiment [looks forward to next segment] to test our hypothesis [looks back at previous one].

Place It Last

Place it at the end of the passage: Against this background information concerning the factors affecting the soft-drink market overall, the performance of the Big Q line can be interpreted more precisely. [links up with topic sentence of next segment] During the past twelve months, Big Q soft drinks performed extremely well in the parts of the market that were generally weak, but they performed below average in those that were strong.

Of course, there are other elements of writing that cannot be ignored —grammatical accuracy, mechanical correctness, good word choices, a pleasing style — but those aren’t really linked to organization.

In professional writing, you should help readers through your document by identifying purpose and topic along the way, giving them exactly the evidence you promised them, and then rounding off each discussion by providing a conclusion. In other words, for everything you write in this course, follow the three-part organizational rule we call The Preacher’s Maxim:

  • Tell them (your readers) what you're going to tell them.
  • Tell them.
  • Tell them what you told them.

The Preacher’s Maxim advocates tying components of your project together by projecting your topic, giving information on that topic, and then concluding that topic.

If you keep it in mind when you write, you will ensure that you are covering the material adequately and keeping your reader on track.