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Background:
Repeat contextual information
each time it is needed.
—Walker (1987a)
Put at the beginning of a
sentence those ideas that you have already
mentioned, referred to, or implied, or concepts
that you can reasonably assume your reader is
already familiar with, and will readily recognize.
Give your readers a familiar
context to help them move from the more
familiar to the less familiar, from the known to
the unknown.—Williams (1990)
Writers can help readers find
coherence and retain information by placing known,
or old, information before new information. The
"given-new" contract contends that
new information is best retained when it is linked
to given or "old" information, in other words,
when words and ideas presented by the text connect
to earlier words and ideas in the text (Clark and Haviland 1977; Just and Carpenter 1980). In fact,
sentences that relate to previous context are
processed more quickly (Albrecht and O’Brien
1993; Suh and
Trabasso 1993) and are remembered
more frequently (Trabasso and van den Broek 1985)
than sentences that do not relate to the previous
context.—Spyridakis (2000)
See
bibliography:
Albrecht and O’Brien (1993),
Clark and Haviland (1977),
Just and Carpenter (1980),
Spyridakis (2000),
Suh and
Trabasso (1993), Trabasso and van den Broek (1985),
Walker (1987a, 1987b),
Williams
(1990)
Examples
Original Paragraph
We don’t use stories to amuse, warn,
arouse, inform, explain or persuade, the way
most people do, according to Williams. But
stories can do a lot. Stories are the most
common form people know and enjoy—people we
write for. As technical writers, we like to
think of ourselves as unemotional, neutral,
factual, leaving "exciting writing" such as
stories to marketing folks. But wait a moment.
Aren’t procedures, essentially, narratives?
Aren’t examples? Perhaps we could borrow a bit
more from short story writers, when we narrate
any tale of problem solving, goal seeking,
decision making, or step-by-step success.
Revised Paragraph
As technical writers, we must recognize
that stories are the most common form our
audiences know and enjoy. The story does a
lot. As Williams points out, most people use
stories to amuse, warn, arouse, inform,
explain, or persuade. We don’t. We like to
think of ourselves as unemotional, neutral,
factual, leaving "exciting writing" such as
stories to marketing folks. But wait a moment.
Aren’t procedures, essentially, narratives?
Aren’t examples? Perhaps we could borrow a bit
more from short story writers, when we narrate
any tale of problem solving, goal seeking,
decision making, or step-by-step success.
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Other ways to make chunky
paragraphs:
4a. Design
each paragraph around one idea.
4b. Put the idea
of the paragraph first.
4d. Put key conclusions, ideas, news, at
the start of the article. Resources
on chunkiness
Taking a
Position on chunkiness
Poster |
