Monday, February 05, 2007

Start With What is Most Important

Imagine science writing as an upside-down pyramid. Start at the bottom with the one fact a reader must know before he can lean any more. The second sentence broadens what was stated first, making the pyramid wider, and the third sentence broadens the second, so that you can gradually move beyond fact into significance and speculation—how a new discovery alters what was known, what new avenues of research it might open, where the research might be applied. There’s no limit to how wide the pyramid can become, but your readers will understand the broad implications only if they start with one narrow fact.
Zinsser 149.

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