E-mail and Marketing Connection--Part 4

Learning to paragraph, and practicing in e-mails, can actually make developing your marketing package easier. How so?

Often, new indexers look at their marketing package in one big package, and it can be very overwhelming to figure out where to start writing. It's easy. Just start with a single sentence and develop one paragraph about that topic sentence.

The paragraph doesn't have to be ten or fifteen sentences long. Remember the advice last week about what a paragraph contains?

1. Topic sentence.
2. Development of main idea.
3. Transitional elements.
4. Closing sentence.

It may only take three or four sentences to accomplish this, especially if you use complex and compound sentences. (Look in a Grammar book for a definition of those two types of sentences).

Once you have that paragraph done, pick out another single sentence and develop a paragraph around that.

Before long, you have will several complete paragraphs which you can then use in your marketing package. With your software, you can move entire paragraphs to new locations in the text to see how it would work. Move your individual paragraphs around until you find the most logical, coherent order. You might need a transitional sentence, or even transitional paragraph, to tie it all together.

What's great is that you can practice paragraphing in your e-mails to public places such as listservs and bulletin boards. Don't get into the habit of subconciously irritating people by not using paragraphing skills, or thinking you just don't have time. Slow down. Think about other people. Think about how this practice will improve your marketing package.

QUESTIONS FOR PARAGRAPHING
So what questions can you ask yourself to develop paragraphs? The answer comes from Creating the Writing Portfolio.

"Is there one topic, stated or unstated, that connects all the information?" (Geeze, this "stated or unstated" bit sounds like picking up concepts from indexing, doesn't it? Paragraphing skills and indexing skills go hand-in-hand.)

"Is all the information in the paragraph closely related to its topic?

Is each sentence [italics added] in the paragraph related to the topic and necessary to expand it?

Does the beginning of the paragraph connect it to the one that comes before it?

Have you signaled that connection with a word or sentence bridging the two?

Have you used the final sentence to tie up the topic of the paragraph?

Does the final sentence lead the reader to the next paragraph?

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