Legal Writing

It's sometimes possible to reorganize a piece of writing at the revising stage of the process. But that's a little like changing the floor plan of a house after you've built it.

Yes, you could conceivably cut the garage off a completed house and move it to the other end of the building, but that's certainly not the best time to do it. Organizing your information, like laying out the rooms of a house, is best done at the planning stage.

This week, spend a few extra minutes at the planning stage, figuring out the best order in which to give your information to your reader.

As the great twentieth-century English philosopher Winnie the Pooh said, "Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it's not all mixed up."