Build on Readers’ Experiences

Like you, your readers probably have read a large number of documents and have become familiar with some of the more commonly used organizing patterns, such as pro/con, cause/effect, or comparison/contrast. Let their experiences work to your advantage. Try to provide what readers are likely to expect where they are most likely to expect it. However, your content doesn’t need to be exactly what they expect. Instead, focus on their expectations about structure and organization. If you’ve presented the pro side of an argument, for instance, you can be fairly confident that your readers will expect to read the con side before long.

If you succeed at anticipating and meeting expectations, you’ll increase readers’ confidence in you. Moreover, you won’t need to keep announcing what’s coming next or circling around to explain why you said what you just said — they’ll already know.