Presenting your message

Once you know what you want to say and in what order, you need to consider how best to present your message so that your reader can understand it easily.

A structure or pattern can help your reader sort out complex information and make it more accessible.

There are several ways you can give your writing a structure:

• a clear title explains what the communication is about

• use paragraphs to break information up into manageable chunks

• headings help to organise information into logical groupings and show how the content is structured

• use bullet points, questions and answers, tables, charts or checklists to break up continuous text where possible

• summaries and contents lists are useful for a long document.