Organizing From Dialogue to Pyramid

Now, let’s visualize this dialogue in terms of the hierarchy of information. You’ll see that what emerges is the list of food items presented in a pyramid form. Click on the link below to work through the pyramid activity.

Organizing information in this way helps in making logical associations between pieces of information, and it reduces the load on short-term memory. A person receiving information organized in a hierarchical structure has an easier time making sense of and retaining the information. This occurs with any kind of information that you receive, and it works for reports and other written documents too.

According to author Barbara Minto, our minds naturally construct pyramid groupings of information in order to make it more comprehensible. In her book, The Pyramid Principle, she advocates using pyramid structures to write reports and other documents. Adopting the pyramid technique of outlining reflects the thought processes that the mind uses to comprehend complex information. In the case of report writing, those minds belong to your readers.