Organise Your Thoughts
Estimated Time: 30 minutes
Guiding question: How should I organise the content of my message to achieve my purpose?
Whatever goal you have in mind when writing, you should intentionally shape the structure of your message to achieve your purpose. In professional contexts, there are several standard organising patterns that you can use, and they typically contain three main sections:
- Opening: The opening should be used to get the reader's attention so that they continue reading the rest of your text. For an email, it can be a greeting. For a long piece of writing, it can be an introduction that outlines the content of the rest of the document, or it can even state the important conclusions that the message is trying to communicate.
- Body: The body contains the main content of the message and is the text that accomplishes the purpose of the written communication. The body may include:
- Background information
- Detailed explanations or instructions
- Arguments
- Evidence
- Closing: The closing should wrap up the communication. If the piece of writing is long, the closing can include a summary of what was said earlier, but this isn't mandatory. The closing can also point to a "call to action" for the reader (e.g. what you want the reader to do now that they have read your message) or details about what the reader should expect next.
The main task when structuring is organising the opening, body, and conclusion of your message so that they are coherent and achieve your purpose. Several standard organising patterns can be employed, which organise content into a logical order that readers can easily follow.
The table below summarises the five organising patterns mentioned in the video, plus other patterns that can also be useful to employ. Some of these patterns should look familiar to you, as they are similar to the paired questions you can ask during the information gathering process presented in Section 3.6
Useful Organising Patterns
| Organising Pattern | Description | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Description | An explanation of a topic and its characteristics. | Broadly applicable. Many of the subsequent organising patterns in this table are variations of the description pattern. |
| General to specific | A descriptive organising pattern that starts with the bigger picture to set context then narrows down to increasingly more specific and focused information. | Useful for an in-depth analysis or explanation of a topic. Starting with general allows you to set the specific topic that you want to discuss within a broader context, which can help grab the readers interest. |
| Specific to general | A descriptive organising pattern that starts with very focused and specific information then broadens to more general information that shows the context and bigger picture. | Useful for an in-depth analysis or explanation of a topic. Starting with the specific details, an example, or personal story related to the topic, can help make the topic more accessible and relatable to the reader before you broaden to the bigger impact and context. |
| Definition and Example | A description that starts with a definition then provides specific examples for illustration. | Useful for explaining concepts to people who are new to the topic. |
| Sequence or Chronology | Sequence: An arrangement of information in a step by step sequence of how they occur to achieve a specific goal.Chronology: A linear narrative that includes details of events in the past, present, and possibly future. | Useful in communicating how something works or giving instructions for performing a task. It also works well for incident reports, biographies, event summaries or debriefs, sales reports, trend reports, action plans, etc. |
| Cause and Effect | A description of an event, action, or thing, either preceded by an explanation of what caused it or followed by a description of its effect. | Useful for an analysis of the causal relationship between things. Useful when you need to explain how or why something happened. |
| Compare and Contrast | An explanation of the similarities and differences between two or more items. | Useful for analysing how two or more things are the same and different. It can be useful when analysing the comparative value of something to provide a recommendation. |
| Problem and Solution | A description of a problem followed by an explanation of a potential solution. Or a proposal of a solution, followed by a description of the problem that motivated it. | Useful for persuasive writing, like marketing products or services, as well as scientific reporting. Also useful in situations when recalling how a problem was solved, e.g. an incident report. |
| Pros and Cons | An account of the advantages of a topic followed by the disadvantages. Similar patterns to this would be Strengths and Weaknesses or Opportunities and Challenges. | Useful when analysing the value of something to provide a recommendation. |
| Order of Importance | Presents the most important information first, followed by information in the order of descending importance or significance | Useful for proposals, project reports, or research findings where there is a lot of information for the reader to understand. Also useful for things like emails, where the reader may not have much time to review the contents of the message. |
| Spatial | In certain situations, the information you want to communicate might relate to different geographies or spatial units (e.g. company divisions, departments, teams). Therefore, organising by the spatial unit could be useful. | Broadly applicable, depending on the type of information that you need to communicate. Easily combined with some of the other organising patterns. E.g. Comparing and contrasting data trends across various countries. |
| Topical | If your information is already naturally organised by topic, you can use those topics to organise the entire piece of writing. | Broadly applicable, depending on the type of information that you need to communicate. |
Check Your Understanding - Identifying Organising Patterns
Check Your Understanding - Using Organising Patterns
References
Appleman, J. (2018). 10 Steps to Successful Business Writing. 2nd Edition. Association for Talent Development.
Burnell, C., Wood, J., Babin, M., Pesznecker, S., Rosevear, N. The Word on College Reading and Writing. Open Oregon Educational Resources.
Rossiter, T. (2013). Effective Business Writing in Easy Steps. In Easy Steps Ltd.
Smith, Jordan. Communication @ Work. eCampus Ontario