This post presents you a structured template for writing informative articles. It is for those Steemians who have a bit of a difficulty in presenting a topic in a logical structured way that I have designed the 7WACP template. It will provide you with a guideline and following order how to progress and how to conclude your story. I have also gathered a set of useful icons or glyphs (see image above) that will help you to remember and apply this structure systematically, if you wish. Note that this template is only a suggestion, you can write in whatever way you like, but if you need some structure, it can be quite helpful. You can also use only certain elements of it.

When you use the 7WACP template, you structure your argument by answering seven “W” questions as regards What, Who, When, Where, Why, hoW and Weight, which you need to answer to come to an "Appeal" (A), a “Conclusion” (C) and future “Prospects” (P) (see picture above).

What

In the “What” section you summarise the topic you are going to discuss. You tell your audience in a few words what you are going to tell them. If the topic is ambiguous, you can include a disclaimer indicating what this topic is not about. For instance in this post I only provide you with a template for the content and structure of informative articles, but not for poetry or storytelling. This section can include an explanation of a hypothesis you try to prove.

Who

In the “Who” section you identify your audience. For instance the present post is written for those newbies who have a bit difficulty in organising their thoughts in a structured way for an article. Here you try to seduce your readers to continue to read, by promising them they will get a conclusion and answer to the questions they are looking for to be answered.

Background: Where, When and Open-scape

In the background section you give a historical context of your topic, like similar topics that were previously known. If possible you provide a geographical setting or a geometrical configuration in which your topic is positioned. This is your background art, for which you’ll have to do some research and/or some data mining. You can also indicate the relations of the items in your topic with known items it interacts with. This is the so-called “open-scape” or “interactome” of your topic. You can summarise drawbacks in the items of the historical context, which are overcome by the topic you present.

Why

You can now indicate in the “Why-section”, what brought you to write this topic and why it solves the problems remaining in the background art. You thus indicate the purpose of your essay. For instance others have suggested how to improve your writing by lay-out, formatting and editing skills, but no one has come up with a structured template for blogging. This post aims to provide you with that structure.

HoW

In the how section you give the actual body of your argument. You can start by listing the structural features (form, material, and design), functions and purpose related to the items of your topic. You can also describe the relations of the items with open-scape items. Certain topics are more abstract or relate to human interactions, but even these features of these can be listed. This provides a framework for understanding your topic. This is the provision of a so-called “ontology”. For this you may again need to do some research and/or data mining.

From this you can provide a further list of the differences between your topic/argument and what was previously known about it.

You can now list different known ways to bring about these differences and indicate which way you have chosen and why.

Weight and Integrate

As an intrinsic part of this “how-method”, to do so you will now have to “Weight” the pros and cons of those differences. Ideally you can list what effects are associated with those differences. You can repeat what problem was at stake and detail this more in the light of these differences and explain how these differences overcome this problem. For this you need a line of reasoning, in which you illustrate by giving one or more specific examples of how your hypothesis is proven or how your problem is solved and from these you abstract a generalised patterns. You have now integrated all the information to yield the conclusion. Throughout the body of your article (i.e. in every section) it can be useful to illustrate abstract general ideas with concrete specific examples.

You can also list alternatives to your hypothesis or solution and again via weighting pros and cons argue why these alternatives are less likely or less useful.

Appeal

You may try to win your audience by making an “Appeal” to them. Why this was important for them or why they should support your argument. Here you can use some psychology and put yourself in a specific role. The role can be an educator, a parent, a peer, a manager, an employee, a child, someone seeking support. You can also make an appeal to the valuation of aesthetics, originality and creativity of your hypothesis and or solution (either your hypothesis can be original and the solution known from different areas or your hypothesis can be known, but your solution can still be original. There are also original hypotheses with original solutions/argumentations).

Conclude

Now you can conclude by summarising what your hypothesis or problem was; which solution you have chosen and why this is appealing to certain people. Basically, you tell your audience what you have told them.

Prospects

Finally you end with a list of possible future prospects, suggestions and developments which can arise as a result of your ideas. You can also list potential alternative applications of your concept.

You have now seen how a set of 7 simple W questions combined with an appeal (A), conclusion (C) and prospects (P) give an easy-to-implement format for blogging informative articles.

If needed you end by thanking your audience for reading your article and invite them for comments and questions.

The scheme I have just proposed can also be used for problem solving, managing and giving presentations. And if you are lucky enough, you increase your general awareness and intelligence of the world around you.

I hope you have liked this metablog explanation of my blogtemplate (or should I say “steemplate”) and I hope I have inspired you to use it, in whatever way you like. Feel free to use the set of icons/glyphs I proposed. Thanks for reading and I’d be really happy to receive replies with questions and comments.