Structure

How a document's content is arranged is called the document's structure. Giving your document structure creates a logical flow from one section to the next, allowing your reader to easily find the information they are looking for, and helps prevent the reader from getting confused by what might otherwise be a disorganized jumble of words.

Most people are familiar with the structure used in books, which tend to have a title page, a table of contents, an introduction, a series of parts with each part having a series of chapters, each chapter having a series of sections, a conclusion, and an appendix.

Unless you're writing a book, however, the structure used in a book would be more structure than you would need.

For example, if you were writing instructions for how to use a new keycard entry system, having a table of contents, an introduction, parts, chapters, sections, a conclusion, and an appendix would be overkill. Instead, for documents shorter than the length of a book, we will tend to use a structure appropriate for that specific type of document.

In the business world, many of the documents you will be asked to write share a common structure based on the type of document you are writing.

For example, if you are writing a business plan, you should follow the common structure of a business plan, which is typically: a title page, an executive summary, a company description, the bios of the management team, products and services, the marketing and sales strategy, financial projections, and a funding request - if the business is seeking funding.

If you were writing a project status report, a common structure might be: a title page, the work completed, the work in progress, the work remaining, the delivery schedule, project delivery risks, the project's budget, the project's burn rate, and a list of action items.

There are many types of business documents that share a common structure, including earnings reports, revenue projections, sales outlooks, pitch decks, privacy policies, terms of use, instruction manuals, defect reports, product roadmaps, org charts, employee directories, and project plans.

When writing a document - before inventing a structure of your own - verify that there isn't already a common structure that you should be using based on the type of document you are writing.

If you do have to invent your own structure, you will generally have two choices: to let the structure emerge as you write, or to decide on the structure before you start writing.

If you choose to let your structure emerge as you write, you will have much more freedom to let your document evolve over time, but you run the risk of writing too much or too little of what is required. Further, letting your document's structure emerge organically makes it harder to solicit feedback from colleagues, as instead of having them quickly review a document's structure, they will have to read your draft in its entirety to get an idea of whatever you are writing about.

For business documents, it is usually preferable to decide on the document's structure before you begin writing, as it is much more efficient to only write what you need to write, and it is much easier to solicit feedback from your colleagues before you start writing.

Deciding on a document's structure usually involves creating a heading hierarchy, which is a list of the section headings, each with sub-lists for sub-section headings. Once you have a heading hierarchy, you will then have to decide on how the content contained in each section is structured.

Depending on the nature of the document, it may be appropriate for each section to only contain paragraphs of plain text, but in practice, this tends to make the document more difficult to read as the length of the document increases, as people tend to find it hard to read large blocks of text - often referred to as a "Wall of Words".

Instead of using only paragraphs, you might consider making use of bolds, lists, tables, graphs, and diagrams to avoid presenting your reader with an imposing wall of words.

When writing paragraphs, bolding an important phrase will help to create a visual anchor as people skim through the document, and will help people better understand the most important point contained in the paragraph. The key to bolding phrases in a paragraph is to do it sparingly, because if everything is in bold, nothing is in bold. At most, only a few relevant words near the middle of the paragraph should be bolded. There tends to be less value in bolding words at the very beginning or end of a paragraph, as the beginning and end of a paragraph are already visual anchors that people look for while skimming a document.

If you have information in a paragraph that can be presented in a list, you should always use either a numbered or bulleted list, as lists are much easier for a reader to skim than paragraphs, which increases the chances that each item in the list will be read and understood.

When presenting data in a table - a frequent requirement in business documents - be sure to use as few grid lines as possible, as grid lines tend to make a table harder to read, and avoiding grid lines tends to make tables easier to skim.

Instead of presenting data in a table, you might also present it as a pie, bar, or line chart, as generally people would much prefer to glance at a chart than stare at the columns, rows, and cells of a table. If the detail of a table is still required, you might consider adding a table next to the chart that represents the same information.

If ever there is a way to present written information in a diagram, be it as flow charts, quadrants, schematics, or any other type of visual presentation, it is usually preferable to do so, as people tend to prefer looking at pictures to reading text.

As you make progress on your document you should continue to improve its structure, even if you deviate from the structure you originally decided upon, as it is more important that your document be easy to read and understand, than to stick to your original plan.