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The term inverted pyramid refers to a way of structuring an article so that the most important pieces of information are placed first and other information follows in descending order of importance. The term inverted triangle is sometimes used as a synonym for inverted pyramid. An inverted pyramid article contains two basic parts: a lead and a body. The lead is a single sentence or a short paragraph that summarizes what the article is about. Each paragraph in the article should have some logical connection to the preceding paragraph. There is often no fixed ending or conclusion; rather, the article ends when the writer runs out of useful or interesting information to provide. The inverted pyramid structure is commonly used for news articles in newspapers and magazines for several reasons. One is that it enables people to quickly view just the first few lines of an article to find out what it is about and see if it is desirable to read further. Another is that it allows editors to cut off the remainder at the end of any paragraph due to space restrictions or for other reasons while preserving the most important part. It is much easier for an editor to just cut off the end of an article rather than to have to read through the entire article to find individual words and sentences to delete. The inverted pyramid format is also important for web sites because people typically just briefly scan pages to see if they want to read them more carefully. However, the ease of shortening an article is not as much a consideration for the web as it is for the printed media because space is virtually free. Pages on LINMO-compatible web sites generally use an inverted pyramid structure in order to make each page into a self-contained article, which is one that can be understandable and useful to anyone regardless of their level of knowledge about the topic. However, the format is modified in that each specialized term or concept is followed closely (e.g., in parenthesis, in the next sentence or in the next paragraph) by a definition or explanation. People with little or no knowledge about the topic can start reading from the beginning and might want to skip the latter part, whereas more knowledgeable readers might want to just skim over the first part and focus on the latter parts. Created May 8, 2006. |