Readability and Structure
Use clear structure when writing
A topic sentence, typically found at the beginning of a paragraph, expresses the main ideas within the paragraph. All public communication should use topic sentences at the beginning of every paragraph.
Topic sentences aid readers in several ways. First, it provides readers context for what is happening in the paragraph, allowing them to orient themselves toward the information you are providing. Second, it allows readers who are skimming for specific information to find what they are looking for. Third, topic sentences provide a clear structure for your work. If you can get an understanding of the piece by reading the topic sentences, odds are your writing is clear and well organized.
Put general ideas before exceptions and conditions
When writing, put general information first. Doing so allows you to reach the most readers and lay down the most important information first. After doing so, add in exceptions and conditions. This structure is clear and coherent and does not cause readers to double-back to better understand the meaning of your sentence.
Use headings to guide readers through your material
Headings are a useful tool to orient readers toward specific material. However, headings can still confuse readers if deployed incorrectly. There are three types of headers you should use depending on the project you are working on.
Question headings are useful for FAQs or other documents in which interested readers may have questions about a policy. If you know that small business owners have specific questions about where to find resources, for instance, a series of question headings can help guide those readers to those resources. A coronavirus pandemic resource bank is a good place for question headings because small business owners are likely interested in where they can find specific tools to help their businesses.
Statement headings contain a fact or an opinion and are designed to be straightforward encapsulations of the arguments contained in the section below. When Interagency attorneys write comment letters, they most frequently use statement headings to summarize and guide readers to each main argument of the letter.
Topic headings are more formal headings which tell the reader the topic of the following paragraphs. These headings are normally short and frequently require prior knowledge. However, these are the best suited for functional content and often show up in economic writing. Using a heading labeled “Data and Methodology” in a research summary is a requirement of the genre, and quickly and efficiently indicates to a reader the content of the section.
The best headings focus on clarity over brevity. In practice, this often means using statement headings or question headings as tools to guide readers instead of topic headings, which frequently require prior knowledge. Starting a section with a statement heading like “Millennial Veterans Struggle Developing Social Networks” is clearer for audiences than “Findings.”
Use lists frequently
- Highlight levels of importance.
- Help the reader understand the order in which things happen.
- Help readers skim and scan.
- Make it easy to identify all steps in a process.
- Add white space for easy reading.
- Are an ideal way to present items, conditions, and exceptions.
Lists also provide useful summaries for readers. Advocacy’s yearly Report on the Regulatory Flexibility Act always contains a list summarizing Interagency’s accomplishments for any given year, in part because the goal is to provide a snapshot of our yearly activities.
Listing can also help break up long, complicated serial lists. If you need to walk through more than five or six complicated components to a regulation or an idea, consider using a bulleted list.
Use Transition Words
Transitional words and phrases help your reader navigate writing. They provide context for how each paragraph relates to the other, telling readers if a paragraph is linked to the previous one, contrasts with it, or contains a separate idea. There are three types of transition words.
Pointing words refer to something directly mentioned before. They always point to an antecedent, providing a clear link between two paragraphs or ideas. These words include “this,” “that,” “these,” “those,” and “the.” Use pointing words when connections need to be made explicit. For instance, if you are writing a regulatory alert, you might use a pointing word to connect a sentence describing a rule to a previous sentence that names the rule.
Echo links are words that echo a previously mentioned idea. These transition words are useful for situations in which you need to establish the meaning of a concept for an audience and are often useful in situations where you cannot avoid using jargon. For instance, if you spend the first paragraph describing the decreasing number of banks who lend to small businesses, the echo link in the second paragraph might be “this consolidation.” The link describes the previous paragraph to your reader while contextualizing the paragraph with the echo link.
Explicit connectives are words like “further,” “also,” and “therefore,” or words that indicate reversal, like “but” or “however.” These supply transitions in writing. While frequently overused, explicit connectives are great to use in places where technical meaning might get lost by a general audience or where critical ideas need to be explicitly joined.
Use tables where possible
Tables are a useful tool to avoid dense paragraphs and complicated sentence and paragraph structure. Frequently, a table can be used to organize a series of interrelated thoughts in a logical order. The most common table you might find is an if-then table, which organizes material by a situation (if something happens) and the consequence (if something else happens as a result).
Additionally, using tables to illustrate the result of Advocacy letter-writing or research can be an effective way to lay out achievements to stakeholders.
Visit the Writing Accessible Content section for tips on how to create accessible tables.