ClearTips: Riveting reports

6. Make a Strong Point about Each of Your Paragraph Topics

Write the first topic of your paragraph-by-paragraph plan at the top of a sheet of paper (or at the top of a fresh page on your word processor), and make a strong point about it. If you have a general topic such as this:

Topic Partnerships of governments, businesses, and citizens

you might move to a strong point such as this:

Point When governments listen to businesses and citizens and work in partnership with them in deciding and implementing policy, they create programs that people will support.

Now do the same for all the other topics in your plan. You'll find for some that it's easy, and for others, impossible—and that will suggest refinements to your plan.

Here are some examples of moving from topic to point for the Census Bureau's brief on projections:

Topic California, Texas, and Florida take different paths
to
Point California, Texas, and Florida will probably see the most growth but they will grow in very different ways.

Topic California's losses through interstate migration
to
Point California will see big gains through natural increase and international migration but big losses through interstate migration.

Topic Texas's gains from all three contributors
to
Point In Texas there will be a balance among all three contributors to its rising population.

Here's a set of topic-to-point conversions for the overview of the recent World Development Report:

Topic New ideas about the role of the state
to
Point The world is changing and with it our ideas about the state's role in economic and social development.

Topic Expectations met, but not everywhere
to
Point In a few countries things have indeed worked out more or less as the technocrats expected, but in many countries outcomes were very different.

Topic Government getting bigger
to
Point Over the last century the size and scope of government have expanded enormously, particularly in the industrial countries.

Topic Focus on state inspired by dramatic events
to
Point As in the 1940s, today's renewed focus on the state's role has been inspired by dramatic events in the global economy, which have fundamentally changed the environment in which states operate.

Topic Clamor for more effective governance
to
Point The clamor for greater government effectiveness has reached crisis proportions in many developing countries where the state has failed to deliver even such fundamental public goods as roads, property rights, and basic health and education.

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