How to Organize Your Writing: Quick Tips that Illustrate Their Own Points
- On May 21, 2019
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Most people probably don’t think very deeply about this topic, but the choice you make will affect your readers’ experience of your writing. Whether you want to organize complex items or emphasize simple ones, and whether you want your reader to pay attention to every one of a long list of items or to compound them all together, your choice of when and how to use lists will either aid or thwart the impression you actually want to make. The following quick guide includes a bullet list to describe when you might want to use a list, a numbered list to illustrate when you might want to use a bullet or numbered list, a sentence-form list to explore when you might want to use one of those, and a non-list paragraph to discuss when you might be best off not using a list at all.
A Bullet List to Describe When You Might Want to Use a List
Using a List is a Good Idea When…
You want to do one of the following:
- Emphasize the plenitude of items
- Present items with numbers that can be used to refer back to them
- Save room by using phrases instead of full sentences
- Avoid repeating words or synonyms
You can do both of the following with all items:
- Group them in a single category
- Begin them each with the same grammatical structure (e.g. all nouns or all completions of the same sentence beginning, as I’ve done here)
A Numbered List to Illustrate When You Might Want to Use a Bullet or Numbered List
Choose Bullet or Numbered Format When…
You can also do at least one of the following with all items:
- Express them briefly
- Begin each one with a title section like this and then continue with brief details on the same line, as I’ve done here and in the list below; this allows you to have list items that are several lines long, while the bold parts still give the reader the experience of a brief and simple list
You want to do one of the following:
- Organize an overwhelming number of items into categories
- Highlight a few items, like your 4 services or 3 goals
- Emphasize the simplicity of what you are describing
- Guide the reader through chronological steps
- Minimize the amount of text your audience will need to read (important for pieces like brochures and websites)
- Give the eye a break by varying your format in a long piece of writing
A List in Sentence Form to Explore When You Might Want to Use the Same
Choose a sentence format like I did in this example is a good idea when: there isn’t enough room for a bullet or numbered list; you have only a few items and they are not worthy of great emphasis; you already have several bullet lists in your writing, as I do above; or you want your readers to lump everything in the list together in their minds and feel how big that lump is. For example, you might use the latter technique to write a list of challenges a person or community faces from multiple forms of oppression; a long list in a sentence will pile all of the issues together, overwhelming readers and illustrating how overwhelming all those challenges must be for people experiencing them.
A Non-List Paragraph to Discuss When You Might be Best Off Not Using a List at All
Using a list structure is a bad idea if you cannot easily group your items into a single category, or if you need to explain different contexts for your readers to understand each item. You are also better off describing your items individually in a paragraph like this one if you would have too many items on your list, which could lead readers’ minds to gloss over some of them. By describing your items in sentences like this paragraph does, you ensure that each item receives adequate attention. This is also useful if you don’t want to emphasize the number of items on your list or have them all lumped together, or if the items on your list would each be longer than a few lines and brevity is not a possibility.
Hal Portner
Erica, I appreciate your making the media the message because:
* It is ‘to the point’,
* It encourages comments, and
* Focuses the reader on the elements.
Thank you.