Take a look at the following comic strip.
Lemont wants to know why the attorney (in glasses) hasn’t summoned his ex-girlfriend, Roxanne, to testify in court. The attorney gives three reasons. Do they all seem to be equally good excuses?
Does their order make any difference?
Lemont’s right. The attorney’s first two excuses seem weak. Just because it was hard to get a subpoena doesn’t mean he couldn’t have done it, in spite of the holiday and the storm. But those excuses seem even weaker in light of the third one: If process servers (people licensed to deliver court documents) keep disappearing when they try to deliver Roxanne’s subpoena, then the attorney has a pretty good reason to stay away. If the attorney had “led with that last one,” he probably wouldn’t even have needed to mention the other two reasons.
When you offer reasons in support of your claim, you should always order them in the way that will appeal most to your reader. Thinking about how you order your reasons will help you to avoid the kind of response the attorney gets from Lemont.
