It is our job, as writers and editors, to deliver our central point so that the reader can’t miss it.

By Peter P. Jacobi

What's the point of an article? Readers sometimes aren't sure.

They are not sure because writers have failed to identify the subject of their story. They write around the subject or wait too long to provide a clear picture of it. Whatever the reason, the result is a reader wallowing in information or wandering about a verbal landscape without a guidepost to direct the way.

The point is what an editor should always look for in a manuscript. If it isn't there, then the editor must either ask the writer to make the addition or do it him or herself.

Remember that awful lesson from high school English? The one about the theme of the sentence? Perhaps a teacher asked you to find that key to a paragraph, to spot it in a piece of assigned reading. Or she asked you to write your own paragraph built around a sentence that contained the essence of what the rest of the passage was about.

Well, just as paragraphs benefit from such a focused, central message, so articles do. The authors should be asked to include a sentence or three that tell the reader what the entire story is really all about.

Call it a thesis or a theme or an initial summary or, as they say in scientific material, an abstract. But early on in an article, the author needs to be specific about the essence of the topic. For the writer, it's a matter of coming up with a nugget -- either at or close to the start -- that lets the reader in on what's really happening in the unfolding narrative.

Granted, titles and subtitles and varying kinds of design breakouts help today's reader find out what's on a writer's mind, but the main dish, the article, should not be dependent on the frills. Writers need to make a point.

The problem sometimes is that writers, having worked so hard to develop an article and, therefore, becoming immersed in it, may believe they've been very clear, when actually they haven't. It's in their head rather than on paper. So, editors, make a point of locating the point or place it there yourself.

Back in the '90s, Howard Kurtz wrote about a then-popular talk show personality and got right to it. His New Republic article, "Father of the Slide," begins: "In the end, Phil Donahue, who invented the genre that kept sinking even lower into a miasma of tawdryness and sleaze, was simply outpaced in the race to the bottom."

That's a first sentence, a first paragraph, an opening. It also happens to be a statement that tells me exactly what this story is about. Donahue is being devoured by the monster he created. If the article is well written, as this one happens to be, everything that follows will bear out the opening. Donahue's television demise -- the what and the why -- will be clear to me when I'm done. The lesson will have been taught.

Subjects Defined in Summary Paragraph

U.S. News & World Report chose to lead with a summary paragraph in "Stellar News for Stars and Dreamers":

The heavens rained news last week. Astronomers meeting in San Antonio astounded one another with a series of dramatic reports that promise to improve our fundamental understanding of the universe. They presented conclusive evidence that stars the size of our sun have planets and those planets might be able to support life. They saw for the first time galaxies forming at the dawn of time, thanks to pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. And they learned that at least half of our own Milky Way galaxy is composed of ordinary stuff, not exotic as-yet-undiscovered particles that some have postulated.

The next sentence reads, "Here's how to understand the highlights." So the writer has compressed the news in the opening paragraph. The rest of the article will be follow-through. Subject defined. Subject to be explained.

A Terrence Rafferty review in the New Yorkerbegins: "In most respects, Ridley Scott's White Squall is a very dull, square movie, but, as with all Scott's pictures, there is something brave and stubbornly romantic about the whole misbegotten enterprise."

Here we have an excellent, pithy summation of Rafferty’s analysis. The reader becomes privy to his thoughts immediately. The support, the proof, will follow.

Indeed they do.

Thesis Delayed to Entice

Often, however, a writer wants to build toward the thesis, wants to draw attention in a more fetching way. In that case, the thesis is withheld. Richard Morin did that in "Tune Out, Turned Off" for the Washington Post National Weekly Edition:

Edward Howey of Gordo, Ala., is one of democracy's bystanders. He doesn't know the name of the vice president of the United States. He can't name his representative in Congress or his two senators. He doesn't know whether the Republicans -- or is it the Democrats? -- control Congress these days.

"Politics doesn't interest me," says Howey, 45, who owns a soap-making plant. " I don't follow it, don't vote, don't care. Never had time for it. Always had to make a living."

Howey is not alone. Whether uninterested, uninformed or simply ignorant, millions of Americans cannot answer even basic questions about American politics, according to a survey by the Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University.

The first two paragraphs constitute the attention-getting lead. The third paragraph addresses is the point of the story. And we're going to find out what that signifies.

Laura Shapiro also waits a little in her Newsweek piece, "To Your Health?" She begins, "'Oh, for a beaker of the warm south,/ full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,/with beaded bubbles winking at the brim,' sighed Keats. Chances are, he wasn't thinking about his arteries. But nearly two centuries later, the US Department of Health and Human Services also took a long look at the poet's favorite intoxicant and came up with the first pro-alcohol message in the history of health policy."

That's Shapiro's come-on.

Next sentence: "According to the department's just-released update of its Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a drink or two a day may be good for you."

And we're on our way. Subject clearly delineated.

"Weird fact of life," writes Kenneth Labich in Fortune. "For every problem we face, someone has come up with a solution way too slick to be true. So we've got fat-free mayonnaise that tastes like rancid yak butter, and let's not talk about bald guys who spray-paint their skulls."

The thesis follows. It's a bit longer than some, but there are no rules on length, just so long as the author compresses the initial summary to a near-minimum. Says Labich:

In the corporate world, there's that supposed miracle cure for ailing organizations --team-based management. The notion hasn't been a total bust; freewheeling, egalitarian teams have worked wonders at companies like Boeing, Volvo, Hewlett-Packard, and FedEx. But the story’s a sad one at more and more outfits that have taken up the cause.

Again, the reader is better prepared to continue because of a main point well made.

Enticing Lead Warms to Point

Let's take one more example of a point delayed but most welcome. Phil Taylor was once on the pro basketball circuit for Sports Illustrated. One of his reports began:

Phoenix Suns forward Charles Barkley sat in the visitors' locker room of the Target Center in Minneapolis last week, inspecting the blue Minnesota Timberwolves practice shorts a clubhouse attendant had offered him for the next day's workout. That prompted one observer, mindful of the trade winds that have swirled around Barkley of late, to ask whether he could envision himself playing for the lonely T-wolves. He might as well have asked whether Barkley could see himself doing a swan dive off a skyscraper. "Now just hold on," Barkley said. "Don't go trading me to Minnesota. I know things are bad for us right now, but trust me, they'll never get that bad."

Close-in information. New intelligence. Interesting material. Something that even the savvy reader of Sports Illustrated wouldn't know about, a telling scene backstage. Taylor uses the unknown to get to the known, which he wants to discuss thoroughly. The known, the point to be made, comes following the above paragraph to serve as the article’s thesis or summary statement:

The Suns hope, in fact, that the worst is finally over for that believe your team, whose hellish half-season so far has included a devastating rash of injuries, a controversy of coaching change, friction between Barkley and Phoenix management, and some particularly embarrassing losses for a team that was expected to make another run at the NBA championship.

Taylor goes on to the analyze and explore exactly what we've just found out.

Seems such a small matter, the thesis, the coming to a point. But it's terribly important. It's the reader's compass. Provide it.

A classic article from a past issue in tribute to the late Peter J. Jacobi, longtime EO writer and author of The Magazine Article: How to Think It, Plan It, Write It.

Add your comment.