Delivering new information to readers.
When writing on new information, remember two things:
readers remember better when information is presented in small bits.
readers understand better when new information is introduced after familiar information.
To illustrate, let’s look at the starting paragraph from one of my posts:
“I visited my friend Prasanna today. Prasanna and I worked together on several projects at work, before his recent retirement. He invited me to the Bretton Woods Recreation Center, located in Germantown, Maryland.”
Here, this paragraph isn’t terrible. However, the sentences aren’t broken down into smaller, digestible chunks. Thus, readers have difficulty remembering and understanding the main point. For example, it is unclear whether the main point is that I visited Bretton Woods Recreation Center or that I visited Prasanna.
Let me show you a worse example:
“Today, I visited the Bretton Woods Recreation Center in Germantown, Maryland to to visit Prasanna, a work friend who recently retired, with whom I worked on several projects.”
While this sentence combines all of the information in the previous example, it’s too long and diluted for readers. The sentence above is writer-focused and should be avoided.
Now, for more clarity, let’s (i) break the sentences down and (ii) resequence the information from familiar to new. For this exercise, I’ve decided that the paragraph’s main focus should be my visit with Prasanna. Also, the paragraph has one major new piece of information- Prasanna. The readers do not know who Prasanna is. Thus, I need to provide sufficient context before introducing Prasanna, so to prepare readers for this new information.
Here’s a better example:
“Today, I visited one of my work friends. The friend’s name is Prasanna. Prasanna and I worked on several projects at work. However, he has since retired.”
This paragraph should be much easier to digest.
Notice how the starting sentence doesn’t include the word, “Prasanna.” Instead, I start with the word “friend.” I broke them up because I wanted to present information in chunks and to begin with familiar information before introducing new information. The word friend is more familiar than “Prasanna.” Thus, by breaking down the sentence into two, I prepare readers for the introduction of Prasanna.
Also, I try to start each sentence with familiar information and end with the new information. Before introducing new information, I make sure that each sentence is tied to the previous sentence, which is now “familiar” information (see the bold words). This provides readers with familiarity, as well as a sense of direction.
In addition, I deleted the information about Bretton Woods, which was just a distraction.
Still, I see a huge problem with this version- particularly with its sequence.
People mostly remember the beginning and the end of a paragraph. The middle is generally forgotten. Thus, your main message(s) should always be at the beginning and the end. However, in this version, I end with information that Prasanna is retired. That’s not the main message.
With that said, the version below moves the information about Prasanna’s retirement to the middle. In addition, it starts and ends with the two main messages: (i) visiting Prasanna and (ii) our work history:
“Today, I visited one of my work friends. The friend’s name is Prasanna. Prasanna is now retired. Before he retired, we worked on several projects.”
Lastly, if you really want to go crazy with this beginning-end principle, see below:
“I visited, today, one of my work friends. The friend’s name is Prasanna. Prasanna is now retired. Before he retired, we worked on several projects.”
I moved today to the middle of the sentence because it’s not significant. However, this makes the sentence choppy.
Anyways, while the purpose of this post wasn’t to demonstrate how to write with elegance, I hope you found it helpful to learn the basic principle of sentence sequencing.