The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking

Barbara Minto

Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2009 - Business writing - 177 pages

How many times have you written an email at work, read it back and found that it didn't make as much sense as you'd hoped? or worse, someone else has told you that they can't follow it. The Pyramid Principle will show you how to communicate your ideas clearly and succinctly.

Barbara Minto reveals that the mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings. However, if any group of ideas are arranged into a pyramid structure in the first place, not only will it save valuable time and effort to write, it will take even less effort to read and comprehend it.

The Pyramid Principle explains how to: * think creatively, reason lucidly, and express ideas with clarity * define complex problems and establish the objectives of any document * assess your ideas and recognize their relative importance * structure your reasoning into a coherent and transparent argument * analyze your argument to confirm its effectiveness.

The clear communication of ideas, whether to clients, colleagues or the management board, is a key factor in determining personal success. Applying the Pyramid Principle will enable you to present your thinking so clearly that the ideas move off the page and into the reader's mind with a minimum of effort and a maximum of effect.

Bring your ideas to life!

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - OccassionalRead - LibraryThing

I finally got to this book after many years of having it sit on my shelf. I don't think it has aged very well. It's well written (as a book on logical and good thinking and writing should be) but in ...

User Review -

one of the great books for teaching one how to present ideas clearly. great stuff!

About the author

Barbara Minto developed The Pyramid Principle through her early years as a consultant at mckinsey & Company, Inc. She now runs her own consultancy, International, Inc., specialising in teaching the pyramid principle to people whose major training is in business or the professions. She has taught her course to most of the major consulting firms in the world's largest corporations and government organisations.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking; Financial Times Series
• Author: Barbara Minto
• Edition: illustrated, revised
• Publisher: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2009
• ISBN: 0273710516, 9780273710516
• Length: 177 pages