REFLECTING THE PYRAMID ON THE PAGE

In actual practice, most of the documents you write will be in prose on a page to be read by an individual person sitting alone. Whether the document is long or short you want the reader to be able literally to see and absorb the major ideas as quickly as possible. Ideally, he should have your entire thinking (Introduction, Main Point, and Key Line points) in the first 30 seconds of reading. And you want him also to be able to see that (and how) subordinate groups of ideas relate to each other.

If you are writing a long report, you can reflect the pyramid hierarchy on the page in a variety of ways, the most common of which are (8) hierarchical headings, (b) numbered and underlined points, (c) decimal numbering, (d) indented display, and (e) dot-dash outlines. Feelings run high about which of the first three is the "best" formatting device for the report as a whole. I myself lean to the use of hierarchical headings. However in deference to what are excellent reasons given by proponents of the other options, I discuss them as well.

Whichever formatting device you choose, remember that your objective is to make it as easy as possible for the reader to comprehend the major points and all of the grouped support points in what might be a very lengthy document. This means that the format must be applied to match the levels of abstraction in your argument (Exhibit 53), and you must be sure to write transitionary phrases that take the reader gracefully from one grouping to another, as needed.