1. Organizing Your Information Chapter 7

2. Chapter 7 Contents Understanding Three Principles for Organizing Technical Information Using Basic Organizational Patterns

3. Introduction During the planning phase of the writing process, you need to organize the information that will go in the document Need to figure out which organizational patterns will work best

4. Understanding Three Principles for Organizing Technical Information Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose Using Conventional Patterns of Organization Displaying Your Organizational Pattern Prominently

5. Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose The Focus of Everything that we do Why you plan and research your subject Audience and purpose is likely to change Useful to review your assessment of audience and purpose often

6. Audience Will your audience like the message? – Yes- announce main point early – No- consider a pattern that presents your important evidence before your main message Is your audience used to seeing particular patterns?

7. Purpose Do you want your audience to understand a body of information? Do you want your audience to accept a point of view or perhaps act on it? How much information do you need? How long does the report have to be?

8. Three Questions to Ask Does the text follow expected organizational patterns? Do the introductions and conclusions present the kind of information you would expect? Does the text appear to be organized linearly?

9. Using Conventional Patterns of Organization There are 8 conventional patterns of organization that will be discussed shortly Should be used if they already exist- saves time and makes it easier to both you and the audience Conventional patterns serve as a template or checklist- remember information, helps you to remember information and where you should put the information Does not mean that Technical Communication is just filling in the blanks

10. Displaying Your Organizational Pattern Prominently Create a detailed table of contents Use headings liberally Use topic sentences at the beginning of your paragraph

11. Table 7.1- Organizational Patterns Chronological Spatial General to specific More important to less important Compare and contrast Classification and partition Problems-methods-solution Cause and effect It is important to note that complex arguments often require several organizational patterns

12. Chronological Chronological- or time line- to describe events Accident Report and reference manual Guidelines- – Provide Signposts – Consider using graphics to compliment text – Analyze events where appropriate

13. Spatial Used to describe objects and physical sites.

14. General to specific Used when the reader needs a general understanding of a subject before they can understand and remember the details Sets of instructions/User’s Manuals

15. More Important to Less Important Recognition that readers often want the bottom line – the most important information- first Sometimes reverse it when you want to make sure that the audience reads the whole thing

16. Compare and Contrast Describe and evaluate two or more items or options First step is to determine the criteria- often have to consider many Whole-by-Whole Part-by-part Can to both- emphasize particular aspects

17. Classification and Partition Classification is the process of assigning items to categories. Eg. Age, gender, courses etc. Classification is common in Technical Communication Partition is breaking a unit into its components Partition is used in descriptions of objects

18. Problem-Methods-Solution Problem- A description if what was/is not working (or not working effectively) Methods- Procedures performed to confirm the analysis of the problem Solution- Statement on the analysis of the problem/ the correction(s)

19. Cause and Effect Quite often involved in Tech Com Sometimes reason forward Sometimes reason backward – What will be the effects(s) of x? – What caused x? Often difficult because there is no real scientific way to determine cause and effect Cannot always be proven