Use the Inverted Pyramid; or, "Cut to the chase"
Cut to the chase. State your thesis emphatically at the beginning (like I did here).
Don’t beat around the bush when you write, especially if you’re writing for business, or for an online audience. Put your conclusion first, in the opening paragraph or even in the opening sentence. Put the meat of your message at the beginning. Then you can spend time on all of the whys, whiches, and wheretofores, building the case that enhances and supports what you said at the start.
It’s called the inverted pyramid, and it’s what journalists do when their opening paragraph gives readers the Five Ws: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. With this structure, readers will find out right away what the point is, and if they’re interested in the topic, they’ll know right away whether it’s worth their time to keep reading. But if you take two or three paragraphs on throat-clearing, they’re not likely to stick around until you get around to letting them know what it is you wanted to tell them.
Now the admonition to begin with your conclusion goes against the grain of a lot of the writing training (such as it is) people get in their college careers. Academic papers usually begin with some sort of foundation-laying: a problem statement, a review of the literature, background material that sets the stage for whatever it is the writer wants to say.
In addition, sometimes the writing is itself part of the discovery process. I do it myself when I’m thinking through a problem: I’ll sometimes brainstorm all the issues related to the problem I’m thinking about, outline my thoughts, and then I’ll arrive at a conclusion. There are times when a notion is tickling the back of your brain, and one of the best ways to figure it out is to write it out. There’s nothing wrong with that. But once you’ve got it figured out, go back to the beginning and summarize it there.
Of course, this advice does not apply if you’re writing one of the aforementioned academic papers, or if you’re writing for some literary journal where the readers expect you to meander around for a while before you begin to get to your point. But for the vast majority of writing, and especially for business or online writing, nothing beats a strong beginning that clearly states your point.
Roy Jacobsen
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