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Communication · a life skill

Simple Context Setting

say what it's about before you say it

Most confusing messages aren't badly written. They just start in the middle: the details arrive first and the point turns up at the end, if at all. Give the reader the topic, why it matters now, and what you need, in one opening line, and the rest of the message has somewhere to land.

  • Easy
  • Medium impact
  • Learn it: 1 week
  • One line, every message
the same six lines, in two orders
On the left, six lines of a message arrive with the topic after them. On the right, the topic comes first and every line hooks onto it. A schematic of Bransford and Johnson's 1972 finding: context given before a passage raised understanding and recall; the same context given afterwards helped far less. Topic last Topic first packing a suitcase arrives after the words it should explain packing a suitcase every line has something to hook onto Same words. Only the order changed.

A schematic of the finding, not the study's data. Bransford and Johnson, 1972.

The habit

Try it now.

  1. Name the topic in the first line

    “About Saturday's move:” before anything else. Four words are enough to tell the reader which shelf to put the rest on.

  2. Say why it's coming up now

    “The van company called back.” A reason turns a message from “something to read” into “something that's happening.”

  3. Say what you need from them

    A decision, a yes, a time, or nothing at all. “No reply needed” is context too.

  4. Then give the details

    Now they know what the details are for, so they'll read them as reasons rather than noise.

  5. Read only your first line

    If that was all they saw, would they know what this is and what you want? If not, fix line one, not the rest.

    Topic, why now, the ask, then the details.

Example: “About Saturday's move: the van can only come at 8, not 10. Can you be at mine by 7:45? Details below.”

The first line

What is this about?

First, feel the problem. Read the paragraph below and notice how much of it actually sticks. Then show the topic and read it again.

Read this once.

Start by putting everything out where you can see it, then take away about half. Heavier things go first and lowest, so nothing gets crushed. Rolling takes less room than folding. Little things fill the gaps. Whatever you'll want first goes in last. And if it won't shut, pushing harder is rarely the answer.

Now write your own first line.

Fill in three short answers and paste the message you were about to send. The builder puts the context on top and checks that line one can stand on its own.

Start from an example

Line one

  • Topic
  • Why now
  • The ask

The whole message

Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere; it all runs on this page.

The study behind it

The topic only helps if it comes first.

In 1972, John Bransford and Marcia Johnson read people short passages written to be hard to place: every sentence made sense, but nothing said what they were about. One was a set of instructions for doing laundry that never mentioned laundry.

Some listeners heard the passage with no topic. Some were told the topic afterwards. Some were told it before. Across four studies, people who got the context first rated the passages far easier to understand and recalled much more of them. Being told the same thing afterwards helped far less.

The words were identical in every group. What changed was whether the reader had somewhere to put them as they arrived. A message that saves its point for the end asks the reader to hold every sentence in the air until they find out what it was for.

Three groups heard the same passage: with no topic, with the topic after, and with the topic before. Only the topic-before group understood and remembered much more. What they heard How it went No topic little sense Topic after topic little better Topic before topic much more understood
The design, simplified; the words on the right summarise the direction of the results, not their size. Bransford and Johnson, “Contextual prerequisites for understanding”, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972.

The idea

Why it works.

Reading is fitting new words onto something you already know. When the reader knows the topic, each sentence attaches as it arrives. When they don't, they're guessing, and the guesses crowd out the words.

You never notice this in your own messages because you already know what they're about. The opening line hands the reader the one thing you had and they didn't.

When it goes wrong

Habits that help.

  • Use the subject line. In email it's the first line. “Saturday's move: new time” beats “Quick question”.
  • Don't open with “Hey, so…”. Warmth is fine; put it after the topic, not instead of it.
  • One topic per message. Two topics means two first lines, so send two messages.
  • Say it out loud too. “I want to talk about the budget, and I need a yes or no by Friday” works at the start of a call as well.

Go deeper

Keep going.

Keep this going in the app.

HourLife turns these ideas into a daily system — goals, habits, focus, and reflection in one private place.

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