Writing for the Public

Introduction: Your introduction should

• Engage readers in the issue
• Set up the problem
• Designate purpose
• Speak to specific and identifiable audience
• Offer logical, emotional, and/or ethical appeals
• Establish rhetorical distance
• Preview what’s to come in the newsletter

Individual Sections: Each section should

• Connect to overarching purpose
• Handle a new topic, extend a previous conversation in a new way. In other words, avoid repetition
• Add insight to the issue at hand
• Speak directly to audience’s needs and concerns
• Include specific and detailed information
• Offer logical, emotional, and ethical appeals
• Set up the pathways to action: Readers need to see how the issue or problem will be addressed through the pathways to action
• Keep rhetorical distance established in introduction
• Draw from, but not repeat, information in fact sheet, profile, and blog entries

Arrangement: The arrangement of your newsletter should

• Offer necessary information in a logical order: what do readers need to know first, second, third, and fourth
• Establish strong connections from section to section: it should make sense why one section follows the previous one
• Establish larger groupings of sections: for example your first four sections might be on benefits of transportation; or you might create a grouping of sections dedicated to the health services provided through Pitt. These similar sections should be grouped together.

Pathways to Action: The pathways to action you designate should

• Address the problem established throughout the newsletter
• Offer specific and detailed information
• Take the form of one or more sections
• Be found at the end of the document or you may suggest and present pathways to action after each section

Document Design: Your document design should

• Reflect and reinforce the purpose and tenor of your newsletter
• Engage audience’s concerns
• Consider issues such as
  • Visuals
  • Pictures
  • Images
  • Colors
  • Graphs
  • Maps
  • Positive and negative space
  • Proximity
  • Similarity
  • Font
  • Contrast
  • Enclosure