2.3 Organizing

This section defines organizing, outlining, and information architecture.

What is organizing?

Organizing your ideas means that you order your content in a logical “barebones” (Ikechukwu, 2021) way, which will allow you to develop ideas during the drafting phase. In other words, how does one idea lead to the next coherently in terms of sections, subsections, paragraphs, and sentences? Focus on main topics which you can scale down into subsections.

Since you already have some content generated through completion of a prewriting technique, previous company deliverables, or interviews with actual users and cross-functional team members, you have to organize thoughtfully before you begin drafting to help you keep track of the connection of ideas. You can do this by creating an outline, which can be a formal sentence or informal main idea outline.

Another way to look at outlining is by understanding information architecture, which is the act of dividing your content appropriately for your audience and purpose. Redish (2012) argues that there are several ways to organize content into an information architecture:

• • Questions people ask
  • Topic or task
  • Product type
  • Information type
  • People
  • Life events
  • Time or sequence

Clearly, for the purposes of a tutorial, not all of these strategies are logical, but considering your content and thinking about how to chunk it for usability (Cleary, 2021) to ensure “information is findable and useable” (Rosenfeld et al., 2015) is the cornerstone of information architecture.

In Industry

Your organization in a document often depends on the genre of the document. For example, in a proposal, you need to organize the document EXACTLY as stated in the Request for Proposal.

Companies also have specific ways of organizing and writing, so reviewing their style guide and other documents is extremely helpful.

Additionally, when you consult real users, talk to them about how the organization of your content would help them do their jobs more easily and efficiently and take good notes.  Don’t organize your document based on your own experience and expertise since you are writing for specific users and not yourself.

Once you have conducted your research into your audience’s preferences and needs, consulted the company style guide, and reviewed other documents from your company, carefully review all of the content you have gathered and generated, and opened the software to review it, then create your outline.

Organizing through an outline actually saves you time since you create a road map to follow as you write and integrate previous content into your document.

In School

Although many writing professors will tell you that you should create an outline of your main points after you generate ideas through a prewriting technique, other professors and writers generate ideas while organizing in an outline. The point is, your writing process is yours, and you need to follow the process that works best for you. Just understand that if you skip prewriting techniques and jump to outlining first, you are trying to tackle two diverse elements of the writing process at the same time, which could be overwhelming and frustrating for you.

If you outline without prewriting, make sure that you open the software, and write and organize as you use it. This will help you stay focused and consider what needs to be included and how it should be organized.

If you do use one of the prewriting techniques listed above to generate ideas, however, read over your main points and details carefully, and think about how you can organize them logically for your specific audience.  Remember that your expertise on the topic may influence your decisions, but you have to think like your audience instead.  What do you think they need to know first, second, third?  As you identify that organization, write your ideas in that order using Roman numerals, capital and lowercase letters, and numbers along with indentations to show the hierarchy of ideas.

To create your outline

An outline includes Roman numerals, capital letters, numbers, and lowercase letters which are indented at each level.  If you write out your topics only, these may become your level one (indicated in the Roman numerals), level two (indicated in the capital letters), level three (indicated in the numbers), and level four (indicated in the lower-case letters) headings.

A more formal sentence outline includes the same elements as listed above, but ideas are written in full sentences rather than topics. If you write out sentences instead, you are already beginning to build a draft, but writing out sentences in an outline with proper letters, numbers, and indentations is easier since you aren’t writing in paragraph form just yet. You can copy and paste your sentences to reorder them into a clearer organization.

Figure 2.3.1 below shows part of an outline for this tutorial using proper formatting with topics rather than sentences.

Putting your ideas, research, and notes into an outline helps you as the writer, but it can also help your users if you bring them the information and ask for input.  Your professor, colleagues, or boss can also give helpful feedback at this stage before you get too deep into your project.  Anything you can do to eliminate your own workload or save yourself time (and your company money) is useful.