Pyramid Principle: Deduction and Induction

Why not to use deduction for key point

Not only do you make the reader wait a long time to find out what he should do Monday morning, you force him to reenact your entire problem-solving process before he receives his reward. It is almost as if you’re saying to him, “I worked extremely hard to get this answer, and I’m going to make sure you know it.”⊕ (Minto [1996] 2018, p 64)

Also, deductive arguments require the reader to hold multiple statements in their head at the same time. When the statements are separated by paragraphs/pages of text (e.g. for the Key Line), they are hard to reason about.

At the paragraph level, deductive arguments are lovely, and present an easy-to-follow flow; but inductive reasoning is always easier to absorb at higher levels.⊕ (Minto [1996] 2018, p 67)

Present action, then argument

The issue here is whether it is better to tell the reader why he should change and then how to go about it, or that he should change and why each change makes sense. As a rule of thumb, it is always better to present the action before the argument, since that is what the reader cares about.⊕ (Minto [1996] 2018, p 66)

When might the argument for any action be more important to the reader than the actions themselves? When the point you are making at the top of the pyramid is alien to the kind of thing he expects you to say.⊕ Minto provides the example of “Tell me how to cut my costs”/“Forget cutting costs, you should be thinking about selling this business” ([1996] 2018, p 66)

Rules for deductive arguments

The only rules to bear in mind in chaining deductive arguments are that

1. you cannot have more than four points in a duductive argument
2. you cannot chain together more than two “therefore” points⊕ (Minto [1996] 2018, p 68)
   
   

News

These facts are not related, and thus cannot inspire you to draw more general insight. In stating them you are simply passing along news, and there is no place for news in a document whose purpose is to communicate your thinking.

This distinction between news and thnking is an important one to bear in mind, since the fact that the “news” is true tends to lead some writers to believe that such points can be legitimately included in a document.⊕ (Minto [1996] 2018, p 72)