Choosing an Organization Pattern
The shape of your message depends on the purpose you set out to achieve, which is why we say that a clearly formulated purpose must be kept in mind throughout the writing process in professional and technical writing. Whether your purpose is to inform, instruct, persuade, or solve a problem, structuring your message according to set patterns associated with each purpose helps achieve those goals. Without those familiar structures guiding your reader toward the intended effect, your reader can get lost and confused. This often happens when your thoughts aren’t clearly focused and organized enough themselves, but it also occurs even when your message is crystal clear in your own mind, but you articulate it in an order or way that allows your reader to miss your main point. Either way, miscommunication results because your point has taken a writer-centered focus instead of a reader-centered focus. Lucky for us, we have standard patterns of organization to structure our thoughts and messages to make them understandable to our audiences.
Whether we are talking about paragraphs or emails or letters or long reports, most messages follow a three-part structure that accommodates the three-part division of our attention spans and memory:
- Opening. In professional and technical writing—remember—readers usually don’t want to read what is in front of them, and even if they want to or have to read it, they will likely not read all of it. Your opening helps answer their question, “Why do I need to read this?” In longer messages, the opening includes an introduction that establishes the frame in which the reader can understand everything that follows. This accommodates the primacy effect in psychology, which is that first impressions tend to stick in our long-term memory more than what follows, whether those impressions are of the people we meet or the things we read. You probably remember what a recently made friend at looked like and said the first time you met them, for instance, despite that happening months or even years ago. Likewise, you will recall the first few items you read in a list of words better than those in the middle. This effect makes the first sentence you write in a paragraph or the first paragraph you write in a longer message crucial because it will be what your reader remembers most and the anchor for their understanding for the rest. Because of the way our minds work, your first sentence and paragraph must represent the overall message clearly.
- Body. The message body supports the opening with further detail supporting the main point. Our memory typically blurs details, however, so having them written down for future reference is important. You don’t recall the specifics of every interaction with your closest friend in the days, months, and years between the strong first impression they made on you and your most recent memory of them, but those interactions were all important for keeping that relationship going, and certainly some highlight memories from throughout that intervening time come to mind. Likewise, the message body is a collection of important sub-points in support of the main point, as well as transitional elements that keep the message coherent and plot a course towards its completion.
- Closing. The closing completes the coverage of the topic and may also point to what’s next, either by bridging to the next message unit (e.g., the concluding sentence of a paragraph establishes a connection to the topic of the next paragraph) or offering cues to what action should follow the message (e.g., what the reader is supposed to do in response to a letter, such as reply by a certain date). Depending on the size, type, and organizational structure of the message, the closing may also offer a concluding summary of the major sub-points made in the body to ensure that the purpose of the message has been achieved. The closing appeals to what psychologists call the recency effect, which is that, after first impressions, last impressions stick out because, after the message concludes, we carry them in our short-term memory more clearly than what came before. Just as you probably remember your most recent interaction with your best friend—what they were wearing, saying, feeling, etc.—so you remember well how a message ends.
The effective writer therefore loads the message with important points both at the opening and closing because the reader will focus on and remember what they read there best, as well as organizes the body in a manner that is easy to follow and reader-centered and focused on purpose. In the following sections, we will explore some of the possibilities for different message purposes while bearing in mind that they all follow this general three-part structure.
Direct Messages
When you write a business or professional message, you should assume that your audience has limited time in which to read it. When we write messages, the first choice is to usually take the direct approach, which means getting right to the point and not wasting precious time. In professional situations, no one wants to read or write more than they have to when figuring out a message’s meaning, so everybody wins when you open with the main point and follow with details in the message body. If it takes you a while before you find your own point in the process of writing, leaving it at the end where you finally discovered what your point was, or burying it somewhere in the middle, your reader will become frustrated because they were forced to go looking for it. Leaving out the main point because it’s obvious to you—though it isn’t at all to the reader coming to the topic for the first time—is another common writing error. Never assumer a main point or message is implied. The writer who front-loads their message—that is, takes the direct approach—on the other hand, finds themselves in their readers’ good graces right away for making their meaning clear upfront, freeing up readers to move quickly through the rest of the document and on to other important tasks in their busy lives.
Whether or not you take the direct approach depends on the effect your message will have on the reader. If you anticipate your reader being interested in the message or their attitude to it being anywhere from neutral to positive, the direct approach is the only appropriate organizational pattern. Except in rare cases where your message delivers bad news, is on a sensitive topic, or when your goal is to be persuasive, all messages should take the direct approach. Since most business messages have a positive or neutral effect, all writers should front-load their messages as a matter of habit unless they have good reason to do otherwise. The three-part message organization outlined in the introduction to this chapter helps explain the psychological reasons why front-loading is necessary: it accommodates the reader’s highly tuned capacity for remembering what they see first, as well as respects their time in achieving the goal of communication, which is being reader-centered.
Let’s say, for instance, that you send an email to a client with e-transfer payment instructions so that you can be paid for work you did for them. Because you send this same message so often, the objective and context of this procedure is so well understood by you that you may fall into the trap of thinking that it goes without saying, so your version of “getting to the point” is just to open with the payment instructions. Perhaps you may have even said in a previous email that you’d be sending payment instructions in a later email, so you think that the reader knows what it’s about, or you may get around to saying that this is about paying for the job you did at the end of the email, effectively burying it under a pile of details. Either way, to the reader who opens the email to see a list of instructions for a procedure they’ve never done before with no explanation as to why they need to do this and what it’s all for exactly, confusion abounds. At best the client will email you back asking for clarification; at worst they will just ignore it, thinking that it was sent in error and was supposed to go to someone who would know what to do with it. You’ll have to follow up either way, but you have better things to do. If you properly anticipated your audience’s reaction and level of knowledge, however, you would know that opening with a main point like the following would put your client in the proper frame of mind for following the instructions and paying you on time:
“Please follow the instructions below for how to send an e-transfer payment for the installation work completed at your residence on July 22.”
In the above case, the opening’s main point or central idea is a polite request to follow instructions, but in other messages it may be a question or request for action. The main point of any message, no matter what type or how long, should be an idea that you can state clearly and concisely in one complete sentence if someone came up to you and asked you what it’s all about in a nutshell. Some people don’t know what their point is exactly when they start writing, in which case writing is an exploratory exercise through the evidence assembled in the research stage. As they move toward such a statement in their conclusion, however, it’s crucial that they copy, cut, and paste that main point so that it is among the first—if not the first—sentence the reader sees at the top of the document, despite being among the last written.
Figure: Choosing an organizational approach in the writing process
1.1: Figure out your purpose for writing
1.2: Profile your audience
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- Option 1: Direct Approach Pattern – Anticipated audience reaction to your message is enthusiastic, interested or neutral. Provide main point then details.
- Option 2: Indirect Approach Pattern – Anticipated audience reaction to your message is disappointed, resistant or upset. Provide details then main point.
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Indirect Messages
While the direct approach leads with the main point, the indirect approach strategically introduces it later in the message when you expect that your reader will be resistant to it, displeased with it, upset or shocked by it, or even hostile towards it. In such cases, the direct approach would come off as overly blunt, tactless, and even cruel by hitting the reader over the head with it in the opening. The goal of indirect messages is not to deceive the reader nor make a game of finding the main point, but instead to use the opening and some of the message body to build rapport and ease the reader towards an unwanted or upsetting message by framing it in such a way that the bad news can be conveyed in a tactful way. Doing so reduces the chances of damaging business relations with the recipient of the bad news. To convey bad news positively, avoid negative words such as unfortunately, cannot, forbid, fail, impossible, refuse, prohibit, restrict, and deny as much as possible.
When delivering bad news, use the following organization to deliver your message:
- Buffer/Cushion. Start with a sincere greeting unrelated to the bad news. If you open with the bad news, you may lose your reader immediately. A buffer sets up the communication and puts the reader into a more receptive frame of mind. Example: “It’s been a pleasure to serve your office supply needs for the last five years.”
- Explanation. Explain the purpose of the communication and provide a brief overview of the situation. Bad news is harder to accept when it isn’t explained, so provide reasons where possible and appropriate. Example: “Due to an error in our inventory tracking, one of the products (the Canon 3309 desktop ink jet printer) from your December 15 order is backordered until March 1.”
- Apology. Include a simple apology if necessary or appropriate. Example: “Please accept our sincere apologies for the oversight.” OR “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.” OR “I am sorry for the confusion.”
- Redirect. After delivering bad news, include a statement that fosters goodwill. If possible, offer a compromise. The redirect can also be used to discuss specific actions that you will take (or have already taken) to remedy the problem. In the example below, the redirect also includes a soft-sell message (a subtle, low-pressure method of selling, cross-selling, or advertising a product or service). Example: “Please let us know if you would like us to issue you a refund for the Canon 3309 printer or if you would prefer to wait until it becomes available on March 1. If you prefer to wait, we will overnight your printer via FEDEX as soon as they arrive. As a thank you for your continued business, we would like to offer you 20% off your next purchase as well as free 2-day shipping on any of our products.”
Delaying the bad news util the third part of the message manages to soften the message by surrounding it with positive or agreeable information that keeps the audience reading so that they miss neither the bad news nor the rest of the information they need to understand it. No amount of strong or fancy writing will make bad news sound good. However, a well-crafted message will help the reader understand and accept the message.