Designing and Formatting Documents

Designing and Formatting Documents

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this chapter are to

· Identify five basic principles of planning a document’s visual design.

· Explain the elements of effective pages and screens (active and passive blank space, line length, ragged right margins).

· Explain standards for type sizes and fonts, highlighting, capitalization, and color.

· Explain how to design and word headings that help readers locate information.

· Explain how to create, design, and maintain Web sites.

· Explain how to test the visual design of print and online documents.

TEACHING STRATEGIES

One of the exciting things about teaching technical writing is that we get to address document design issues. Strongly consider getting your students to use headings, lists, tables, and graphics in writing projects for your course. For many of your students, exposure to these topics will be fresh and exciting—it will give them some great tools for creating professional-looking documents.

To save grading time and introduce students to the concept of a corporate-style approach, consider establishing a standard “house” style for headings, as well as other document design elements such as lists, notices (warnings), tables, graphics, and the like. Such standardization does not stifle students’ creativity; few have ever used headings or other document design elements anyway. They may be more comfortable starting with a standard and becoming aware of design variables before they begin designing on their own. Also, a standardized document design mirrors what often happens in corporate and organizational writing: professionals are expected to use a design that is standard to their organization or profession. Having students use a standard design can help make them aware of the design variables—capitalization, bold, italics, underlining, type size, typeface, horizontal spacing, vertical spacing, and the relationship of design to body text.

As instructor, you can hand out spec sheets (similar to the “Example Design Specifications” contained in the worksheets section of this chapter) detailing your requirements for headings, lists, and other document design elements. Having a standard document design for your class can also help keep students from becoming obsessed with surface features of their writing projects—getting carried away with fonts and type sizes and special effects.

Some of your students may not know how to use the “styles” functions featured on most word processing programs that define, for example, a set of headings to use throughout a document. Consider having a “field trip” to the computer lab where your novice computer users can catch up and where everyone can see how to use styles as a way of increasing productivity and consistency within documents.

WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES

Here are some ideas for exploring document design.

Traditional Classroom

1. Redesign the GrillWizard instructions in textbook Exercise 1 or the memo in Exercise 4. You might want to do one of these with the whole class and save the other for out-of-class or group work. Get students to find ways to introduce headings, lists, highlighting, as well as other design principles discussed in Chapter 8.

2. Provide your students with a document that is a design disaster, and ask them to analyze the problems and redesign the document. You can give students a disaster document or use the memo exercise included in the worksheets for this chapter of the instructor’s manual on the day that you assign the chapter as homework. Ask the students to do a brief analysis of the problems in the document and then redesign it. You will need to use a brief one-page document for this exercise.

If you do this exercise, it can be fun to ask for volunteers to submit their new documents to you with their names left off and then use the new documents as the center of a class discussion about document design. If you need hard copy, ask them to simply bring the documents to class; if you can use an electronic file, ask them to e-mail you the documents well before class time so that you have time to download them to disk or desktop. You’ll need to have a means to display the student samples (overhead projector, ELMO device, or computer screen for an electronic copy) and to set out clear guidelines about appropriate ways to critique the samples in the class. As a class, have students begin by pointing out things in the samples that can be improved. Then move on to things that are done well; this leaves the students who have created the documents with positive feedback as their last critique.

This is usually a positive and enjoyable exercise because most students will create revisions that are clearly better than the originals, so it is easy to give positive reinforcement and to see the variety of ways that one can approach document design; none of the samples you collect will be identical!

3. Review highlighting and other special typography. In technical writing, highlighting can become a problem. Computer manuals, for example, often use a complex, overly elaborate system of highlighting—specifically, bold, italics, underscores, alternate fonts, caps, and even color. Consider having your students find text with heavy use of highlighting, and analyze it to determine the highlighting rules that are being applied; evaluate the effectiveness of the highlighting scheme; and, if possible, recommend some simpler schemes.

4. Have students visit the Web site of a professional association in their field as suggested in textbook Exercise 7. Have students do a brief analysis of the site using the questions in Exercise 7 and the guidelines for designing Web sites discussed in Chapter 8 as guides for their analysis. Ask them to be prepared to take the class to the Web site if the classroom has a computer with Internet access or to download specific pages from the site and bring them as examples of aspects of the site that they found especially strong or especially problematic. As a class, discuss several of the Web sites that the students visited.

Computer Classroom

1. Demonstrate word processing techniques. Using a word processing program, ensure that your students know how to perform the design and formatting techniques discussed in Chapter 8. Margins, tabs, headers or footers, and page numbers are often difficult—find a way to introduce them to these techniques in their preferred software. Try showing them how to use “styles.” For example, show them how to design a set of headings with special font, type size, and other characteristics. Also, spend some time ensuring that they have adequate control over the various types of vertical lists.

2. Create a draft brochure from the pieces provided in class. Do a quick Web search for a common topic— résumé dos and don’ts work great for this. Find a site that has several different categories of information pertinent to the topic: résumé design, résumé style, scannable résumés, and online résumés, for example. Copy and paste these into a file; then e-mail it or otherwise transfer it to your students (FTP, post to a discussion thread as an attachment). In class, have them access the content you’ve provided and then spend the class time turning it into a brochure. This will give them great experience with columns, typeface choices, highlighting, headings, and generally organizing information. If you have time, let them present their final drafts to each other so that they can see the variations in approach. Remember that the information you’re using is probably copyrighted (on the Web), so students should keep their brochure “publication” only for class purposes.

3. Create a design specification sheet for your team or for the class. In small groups, students should create a set of design criteria to be used in either all future assignments or in a specific future assignment (such as a report, proposal, or set of instructions). Make sure their design specs cover headings, spacing (margins, line length, tabs, columns, justification), highlighting, and text (font choice, size). If creating a design spec sheet for the whole class, then each group should present its proposed scheme and all students should vote (or you as the instructor can be the CEO!). Make sure to save the finalized spec sheets to use on future assignments, and work this requirement into your grading.

4. Demonstrate Web editing techniques. Using your preferred Web editor, do the same thing that is discussed in the first computer classroom activity above. You may also wish to discuss the basics of creating cascading style sheets (css). If your college/university makes Web space available to students, you may wish to take students through the process of setting up their accounts and posting pages on the site.

5. Create a simple Web site/page. Have students work individually or in pairs with a Web editor to create a simple Web site or page. You may wish to have them create a Web site for your class, a personal Web site, or a topical site of some sort (technical writing or otherwise). Have them design the page following the guidelines discussed in Chapter 8 and post the site on your college/university server. If you are using a class delivery vehicle such as WebCT or Blackboard, have them upload the HTML pages there.

6. Create a Web design specification sheet for your team or for the class. In small groups, students should create a set of design criteria to be used in a specific future Web page assignment. You may use this activity to discuss cascading style sheets and have the students create the cascading style sheet that the class will use. Make sure the students’ design specs cover headings, highlighting, text (font choice, size), color, background, and the other elements discussed in Chapter 8. If creating a style sheet for the whole class, then each group should present its proposed scheme and all students should vote (or you as the instructor can be the CEO!). Make sure to save the finalized css to use on future assignments, and work this requirement into your grading.

WRITING PROJECTS

Here are some ideas for writing projects related to Chapter 8.

Traditional Assignments

1. Write a revision of textbook Exercise 1, 4, 5, or 6 and an explanatory memo. Have your students redesign the document in one of these exercises and then write a memo explaining what they did and why. (See workshop Activity 1 above.)

2. Write a memo on the document design of a technical manual. Consider having your students do workshop Activity 3 as a writing exercise. Although item 3 focuses on highlighting, you can open this exercise up to other document-design features such as headings, line spacing, line length, fonts, and margins. Obviously, not every group of students will be right for this much focus on document design, but some will be very keen on it—especially your technical communication majors.

3. Conduct a usability test. Assign the class to teams of three or four, and then assign pairs of teams to use each other as subjects for usability tests as described in Exercise 3 in the textbook. Have each team design a usability test, conduct it using its partner team members as subjects, and report the results as required by the exercise.

Distance Learning Assignments

1. Analyze Web page design, including the consistency of design used within a Web site. Have students each choose one Web site representing a major organization or company in his/her field. One or two representative pages of the site should then be analyzed for their design elements. After studying the design in detail, students should then look through the rest of the Web site and critique the consistency of that design throughout the site. After this evaluation, students should prepare a report to you that analyzes the general design (pointing out strengths and flaws), discusses design consistency throughout the site, and makes conclusions about the quality of the site design and the way it represents the company. An important note: make sure students pick sites that have enough design to analyze. Some are sparse and will leave them with nothing to talk about.

2. Study several online résumés in your field, and write a short report discussing the pros and cons of publishing your résumé online. With minimal effort, a student should be able to find at least two, if not three or four, actual online résumés representing professionals or other students in his/her field. Encourage students to find contrasting examples to make the exercise more interesting. After studying the résumés, they should then write a comparative analysis according to the design criteria in the chapter. To conclude the report, students should discuss, in detail, their own résumé design plans (for either online or paper version). You might even have students create a résumé design specification sheet as part of this assignment.

3. Create a multiple page Web site. Have students create a Web site that consists of at least two pages that are linked together. You may assign the content or have the students choose their own. You could also turn this into a lengthy class or team project and require the class (or each team) to design and create an e-zine. This would require the class (or team) to choose a topic, purpose, and audience for the e-zine; to decide upon the design specifications (perhaps to create a css); to assign particular “articles” to class members; and to post the e-zine online or in WebCT or Blackboard. This project can be a lot of fun because students can exercise their creativity while learning a challenging, and most would consider worthwhile, skill!