100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019

Use pyramid construction
Nine ways to save time and energy

Writing in the pyramid style means getting to the point at the top, putting the “who, what, when, where, and why” in the first paragraph, and developing the supporting information under it.

Newspapers use pyramid style because they are in the business of getting facts to readers as quickly as possible and because of the way news stories must be edited for print. When a newspaper editor has a seven-inch story that he or she has to put into a six-inch hole in the newspaper, that editor doesn’t run through the story with a pencil looking for useless adverbs or sentences that can be rewritten. He or she simply cuts an inch off the bottom. That is why each inch of a pyramid-style story should be less important than the inch that came before it.

You should use pyramid style for any short report and for any story that might be cut. And when you do, don’t put anything in paragraph 12 that the reader must know in order to understand paragraph 7.