3.1 Document Design & Formatting

Designing Reader-Centered Pages and Documents

All documents have an intended purpose—to persuade, inform, instruct, etc.—but they all share a single common purpose first, which is to be read. Effective document design can help to ensure that your audience not only reads your communication but that they also understand your purpose and your message. Prior to reading, your readers see the visual layout of your document, and what they perceive can affect how successfully they receive your communications, so it’s important to design your documents in the same way you draft your writing: with your audience’s needs in mind.

Good design enhances usability by helping readers to 1.) understand your information, and 2.) navigate your document so they may locate pertinent information quickly. Having to ‘hunt’ through blocky text with no headings and little white space to find a particular point, or step, or example is frustrating and time-consuming. As a technical communicator, in addition to conveying clear, concise, and accurate information, you need to be sure your documents are designed in a way that makes receiving that information as easy and efficient as possible.   

Here are some ways good design affects readers’ attitudes, thereby increasing a communication’s persuasiveness.

• • • Good design encourages readers to feel good about the communication itself.
    • Good design encourages readers to feel good about the communication’s subject matter.

A Reader-Centered Approach to Design

Because page design can have such a significant impact on your communication’s usability and persuasivenes, you should approach design in the same reader-centered manner that you use when drafting text and graphics. Think continuously about your readers, including who they are, what they want from your communication, and the context in which they will be reading.

Design Elements of a Communication

It is helpful to think about the building blocks of a page design in the way that professional graphic designers do. When they look at a page, they see six basic elements:

• • • Text: Paragraphs and sentences.
    • Headings and titles: Labels for sections of your communication.
    • Graphics: Drawings, tables, photographs, and so on — including their captions.
    • White space: Blank areas.
    • Headers and footers: The items, such as page numbers, that occur at the top or bottom of each page in a multipage document.
    • Physical features: These include paper, which may take many shapes and sizes, and bindings, which come in many forms.

In Figure 3.1.1 below, notice how your eye is drawn to the blue header and the boxed elements. In these spaces, you can highlight the important parts of your message:

Document Formatting

Document formatting refers to the way a document is visually organized on the page and includes elements such as fonts (type, size, and presentation, like bold, italicized, or colored text); spacing between sentences and paragraphs, as well as a document’s overall margin spacing); alignment of text and graphics, including text justification (left-, centered-, or right-justified) and indentation or tab stops; and the use of lists (numerical, alphabetical, or bullet-pointed), columns, and tables.—anything that has to do with how and where things appear on the page.

A document’s visual appeal affects how readers perceive its information, so it’s important to think about your audience’s needs and to strive to create documents that are consistently and correctly formatted so that they are easy to read and navigate. It’s easy to overlook or even dismiss slight differences in things like font size and line spacing, but these kinds of subtle inconsistencies can detract from the overall professionalism of your work and reflect poorly on your abilities, which in turn may damage your credibility and your readers’ confidence in your message.

Figure 3.1 is an example of the layout for a standard research-style document:

Formatting for Accessibility

Formatting plays a crucial role in making information more accessible to your readers and should be designed to be easily read by all users, including low vision or non-sighted readers, who may be using screen reader software to navigate through your document. Applying the following set of common document design principles will make your content accessible to readers using assistive technology:

• • • Use defined heading styles to create a consistent structure for the document, such as Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. (more heading info below), followed by standard “paragraph” or “normal” styles for the main body text;
    • Use lists to help visually structure information, such as bullet-points for unordered information and numbered lists for  ordered information;
    • Use meaningful hyperlinks that succinctly describe the website;
    • Add alternate (or “alt”) text to images to describe the content of all visuals, including charts, graphs, photos, and illustrations;
    • Use tables to structure information in rows and columns with headers; and
    • Use at least an 11-point sans serif font to aid readability.

For more information on creating accessible documents, visit Harvard University’s Digital Accessibility Services’ webpage “Accessible Documents.”

Headings

One of the most useful characteristics of technical writing is the use of headings.

Headings are the titles and subtitles you see within the actual text of much scientific, technical, and business writing. Headings are like the parts of an outline that have been pasted into the actual pages of the document.

Headings are an important feature of technical writing: they alert readers to upcoming topics and subtopics, help readers find their way around in long reports and skip what they are not interested in, and break up long stretches of straight text. They make text easy to navigate and enable the reader to find information they need quickly.

Headings are also useful for you, the writer. They keep you organized and focused on the topic. When you begin using headings, your impulse may be to slap in the headings after you’ve written the rough draft. Instead, visualize the headings before you start the rough draft, and plug them in as you write.

First-Level Headings & Titles

First-level headings are for formal reports with multiple sections (or “chapters”). If you are writing a brief document, start with second-level headings in the body of the document. Follow these guidelines for first-level headings:

• • • Make first-levels all-caps.
    • Use Roman numerals with first-levels.
    • Bold the entire heading including the Roman numeral.
    • Make first-levels centered on the page.
    • Start a new page whenever you have a first-level heading.
    • Begin first-levels on the standard first text line of a page.

*Note: Short documents, such as those you write for technical writing classes, typically use a centered title and then start with second-level headings in the body of the document.

Second-Level Headings

Follow these guidelines for second-level headings:

• • • Make second-levels headline-style caps (every main word).
    • Use bold on second-levels.
    • Do not include outlining apparatus such as “A.” or “B.” or “1.” or “2.” with second-levels.
    • Make second-levels flush left.
    • Leave the equivalent of 2 blank lines between previous text and second-levels.
    • Leave the equivalent of 1 blank line between second-levels and the following text.

Third-Level Headings

Follow these guidelines for third-level headings:

• • • Make third-levels sentence-style caps.
    • Use bold for third-levels.
    • Either indent third-levels using standard paragraph indentation, or just start third-levels flush left.
    • Do not make third-levels a grammatical part of sentences that follow.
    • Whether third-levels are indented or not, start all following lines flush left. Don’t indent the entire paragraph.
    • Use the standard spacing between paragraphs for paragraphs that contain third-levels.

Figure 3.1.3 is an example of a document with first-, second- and third-level headings:

Watch the following video, “Document Design and Formatting,” by Joyce Bower:

Complete the following H5P exercise to help you identify some key elements of page formatting and design for technical documents:

Chapter 3 Exercise: Formatting Analysis

Additional Resources 

• “10 Rules of Document Design,” from VirtuallyUntangled.com

• “Business Document Design: Basic Principles for the Contemporary Workplace” (comprehensive video from David Taylor on document design, with specific design instructions for Microsoft Word)

CHAPTER ATTRIBUTION

"Page Design." Technical and Business Writing. [License: CC BY-NC-ND]
"4.4 Headings." Open Technical Communication. [License: CC BY 4.0]