How to write a check

A background paper seems to be the easiest thing in the world to write.

Numbers. Many figures. After all you and lick the small Word icon for a series of shots.

Data sheets are designed to inform, so that the natural structure is the inverted pyramid of journalism: the most to least important important.

Besides, how to sort the facts are more important than others, what you want?

The mistake to avoid with leaves

• Too many facts. 'S Easy to numbers and statistics. They collect dozens of them, and spend hours trying find all of the correct numbers and they do not want to use?
• Various sources say the same. This is often a bad idea, several sources belong to the same topic because they do not agree on the number. Different methods were used, and graduated at different times. Even the same organization with the same methods, the same day slightly different figures to statistical noise.
• Posted in random order without flow or structure. There are good reasons to spend the time and thought put the facts into a structure.
• Search bury the facts and responsibilities. Who are the stars of this show? Facts, not where you get them. If your sources and quotes that you are looking for is a ball in a long boring paragraph, insert the source at the bottom of the page.

Questions of structure

It is a good idea to reduce the facts and have some logical order to them.

The first important fact to speak - the size of the problem. Why is this important?

A good second problem is relevance. Why should the average person care? Here is an example: drinking and driving kills 45,000 people per year. They are three times more maimed or killed driving home from work in the hands of a drunk driver, you may be injured or killed by a criminal frequently.

Another important issue is cost. If you are looking for a company that is known to work a new product, this could be the most important fact of all: ". Our new electric car will cost $ 20,000 - and you get $ 2,000 per year to save on gas"

Comparisons are also typical. The press and the public wants to know how things are to be measured against other things they know. Other products. Other problems.

Other information sheet does not refer to the numbers, but with delays. If a prisoner escapes from federal prison in Utah and the U.S. Marshals hunt five states before the catch, the press and the public wants to know what happened and when. A Timeline.

The information sheets can also be used for the specific details of something new, but the screen size and battery life of the last device in the Silicon Valley, the details of an invoice or career numbers new right fielder for the Boston Red Sox.