Getting the structure right: process, paradigm, and persistence

Part 2:

The story so far...

In the previous posts of this article:

* highlighted the importance of getting the structure of a document right for its audience and its purpose; and
* reviewed the structure of three documents to show how poor structure inhibits communication.

This second part focuses on a paradigm and a process that help us to get the structure right - as long as we are persistent.

In short, Part 1 was about the problem; Part 2 is about the solution.

Many of the ideas in this part of the article are borrowed from the work of other: notably Dr Betty S Flowers, Professor Joseph Kimble, and Professor David Kelly. My contribution is to synthesise their ideas, and to add some of my own.

My aim, is to present (as I see it) the state-of-the-art approach to getting the structure right.

I also hope to encourage others to share their thoughts on structure. Most of the information I see about how to write clearly is about word choice and sentence structure. Sometimes there is information about paragraphs. There isn't nearly as much about structuring documents at higher levels than the paragraph. And most of what there is seems to be more about the hallmarks of good structure than how to achieve good structure.

We need more on the "how to" because getting the structure right is both hard work and crucial. Only when a document's language, structure, and design work together, is it that the document is likely to communicate successfully.


The solutions
The solutions to the problems of poor structure lie in :

* putting material in an order that makes the best sense to the reader;
* putting the main message first;
* putting closely related material together;
* using headings liberally and rigorously;
* making sure that pieces of information with comparable heading levels have comparable weight, and a comparable level of importance; and
* using a numbering system that forces you to draft clearly — even if you don’t use that numbering system when you print the document.