Writing Basic Principle: Utilizing Old and New Information

All people can write but only few can write very well. That is the nature law. But writing well is not only about talent but also about how to hone (if your talent has already advanced) or create (if your talent scarcely exists) or revitalize (if your talent has been buried for a long time).

Apart from that, however, writing well involves giving information to your readers. That is the main purpose of writing as an intellectual activity; i.e. telling your readers about the propositions and ideas in your mind that you think they deserve to know. 

If you are writing to make information clear to your readers (that is to say: to clarify), you need to know the following fundamental principle.

The principle is quite simple. We simply have to make use of old and new information in a logical and orderly sequence:

1. Place old information (information that a writer and reader have understood/known) at the beginning of the sentence, and
   
2. Place new information (information that a writer and reader have not understood/known) after the old information, or at the end of the sentence.
   

The rule to decide which one is old or new information is when you first introduce a term/ idea in a sentence, paragraph or any writing composition, that term/ idea is called new information. However, a term/ idea that you've mentioned before (in an earlier sentence or paragraph) is called old information. Although it is not forbidden to rewrite the old information as it was mentioned earlier, old information is usually replaced with subject and object pronouns (it, they, s/he, etc) to avoid too frequently mentioned phrases, which may trigger readers' boredom. For a better understanding, why don't we take a look at the example:

"Antibiotic resistant microorganisms have significantly compromised antibiotic treatment.  A large proportion of resistance in Gram-negative bacteria can be attributed to resistance gene cassettes contained within a site-specific recombination system, termed the integron.  Mobile cassettes contain genes that confer resistance to nearly every major class of antibiotic, and some disinfectants.  New gene cassettes continue to be identified and the sequences of over 60 cassettes are deposited in the GenBank/EMBL databases, as of January 2001. This rapid increase in the identification of gene cassettes has led to the same name being given to two different gene cassettes, or the incorrect naming of gene cassettes.  This letter aims to clarify the current nomenclature for the aadA and dfr families of genes."  (http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/thesis/old_new.html)

 

Now let's distinguish the old and new information in this paragraph.

OLD INFORMATION	NEW INFORMATION
Antibiotic resistant microorganisms	antibiotic treatment
A large proportion of resistance in Gram-negative bacteria	resistance gene cassettes contained within a site-specific recombination system, termed the integron.
Mobile cassettes	genes
that	resistance to nearly every major class of antibiotic, and some disinfectants
New gene cassettes
the sequences of over 60 cassettes	the GenBank/EMBL databases
This rapid increase in the identification of gene cassettes	the same name being given to two different gene cassettes, or the incorrect naming of gene cassettes
This letter	the current nomenclature for the aadA and dfr families of genes