TCS - Six Deadly Diseases Exposed

Six Deadly Diseases Exposed

by Lynn L Kauer
From the "Blue Chip News"
a publication of the
Saginaw Valley Computer Association
Printed in the October 1997 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

Spellingitis
Fontitis
Boxitis
Lineitis
Bulletitis
Clipartitis

As discussed in a previous article, "Don't Strike Out With Poor Speling" the first thing a writer must do, with any publication, is to make sure the spelling and "spelled usage" of words are correct. Nothing kills a message or an image faster than poor spelling. The following is an example of a letter I received last year that clearly suffered from Spellingitis and Fontitis. The person who wrote the letter was promoting his plumbing and real estate management consulting business.

Febuary 24, 1993
Attn: Lynn Cower

This is to advise you I had started my own buisness. You will find enclosed a buisness card with a list of services plus a rate sheet. If I can be of any help please gie me a call.

Not only did his spelling stink, his cover letter had his letterhead crookedly hand stamped somewhere near the center. The stamp bled into the paper and looked like a newspaper caught in the rain. His next problem was that the typeface was courier. Nothing gives a worse look to a document than the courier typeface. Worse, can you imagine what his rate sheet looked like printed in ALL CAPS. Not only did the typing look monotonous and crude, it made your eyes dance and water.

To top it off, the letter and rate sheet was printed with a nine pin dot matrix printer with a nearly dry ribbon. His rate sheet also contained spelling errors the most notable of which was: Rental Management--Rate varys per aplication.

Obviously, I had little faith or confidence in his ability to act as a consultant on a professional level. The fact that he spelled my name incorrectly didn't bother me--I get half my mail addressed to Ms. or Mrs. anyway.

His presentation contained two of the five deadly Desktop Publishing diseases.

Spellingitis-symptoms:

poor spelling and improper "spelled usage" of words.

Fontitis-symptoms:

Too many fonts or typefaces or poor selection of typefaces.

Normally two typefaces are used in a document. Serif fonts such as Times New Roman or CG Times are common. The serif fonts are the ones with "feet and caps" on the letters. The little finishing stokes actually guide the eye to move across the page and are more readable than fonts without serifs-called sans-serif ("sans" meaning "without"). The size of the typeface is also important. For a normal "typewritten" letter the choice of 11 or 12 point is normal for the body type. A size lesser or greater than this range is difficult to read. There will be more on this subject in a future article.

From the typewriter word the typist was forced to use ALL CAPS for headlines as it was the only choice available. In the Desktop Publishing (DTP) world, and this includes using word processors, the use of ALL CAPS should be used rarely if at all. The use of a sans-serif font with a larger typeface is a better choice for headlines. Common sans-serif fonts used for this purpose are Arial, Swiss, or Helvetica.

If the need exists the typeface can be formatted as bold. The typesize for a "typewritten" letter is usually the same size as the body type or up to two points higher.

Never use ALL CAPS for the body text as it lowers readability 60%. I find the people who use ALL CAPS for the body text spend a lot of time on BBS's. Yet, the rules for text on BBSs is to use ALL CAPS to emphasize as it is a forced throw-back to the typewriter limitations. If you have ever tried to read a block of text on a screen that is written in ALL CAPS you would realize how difficult it is to read.

Underlining for emphasis, or the use of ALL CAPS, for emphasis in DTP is an absolute no-no. Italics is used for emphasizing as it stands out without hitting the reader between the eyes. The common rule in DTP is that no more than two typefaces, three maximum, are ever used in a document.

As we work with articles related to the computer world we are forced to use ALL CAPS to properly define acronyms or computer commands such as AUTOEXEC.BAT. If no adjustment is made the ALL CAPS tend to dominate the article and a case of what I call " visual measles" develops. To keep the ALL CAPS under control adjust the point size of the ALL CAPPED words to be one less than that used in the body text. You will find it makes a big difference as your eye scans the page.

Boxitis-symptoms:

Everything is in a box.

I've seen newsletters where there are a number of announcements on a page. Every announcement, every hint, every note was in a box. On one page I counted eight boxes! It looked like someone was turned loose on the page with a roll of greeting stamps. Boxes should be used for needed emphasis or sidebar stories to separate it from the main article. If a box is required, careful attention should be paid to the size of the border on the box. If the border is to heavy, it detracts from the "look" of the page. Treat boxes as graphics. Instead of boxes more attention should be given to the layout of the page. Many times the use of white space around an announcement, or expanding the length of line to cover two columns (assuming a three column grid) isolates the text without having to resort to putting a box around it.

Lineitis-symptoms:

Similar to boxitis except there is an overuse of lines.

Lines are selectively used to isolate one article or idea from another. An example would the use of a pull quote. A line, instead of a box, is used above and below the quote to isolate and draw attention to the main topic of the article.

Sometimes there are so many lines on a page it looks like a road map. For example, if the publication uses a gutter with a line separating columns and proceeds to place lines under every heading and between short articles things start to look a bit messy. Lines should be treated as graphic elements. A good rule of thumb for lines and boxes is less is more.

Bulletitis-symptoms:

Too many and overuse of bullet types.

Bullets are small graphic elements that act to draw attention to specific points of an article. Care should be given so they don't become the dominant element. Treat them as ushers pointing the way to the explanation.

Bullets take on many forms i.e. dots, triangles, arrows, numbers and alphabetic characters. Never use a mixture of bullets on the same line. The other day I saw a letter with a number-dot-triangle combination for one line, a number and two triangles for the next line and it kept getting worse. Rather than leading the reader into the message it made them try to figure out what in the world was going on.

Use bullets sparingly. If the writer has two or more points then the use of a bullet is appropriate. Never use a bullet for each paragraph of a letter. Let the paragraphs stand by themselves. I recently saw a two page letter where every paragraph was preceded by a dot bullet. What impression would you think this gave to a reader?

Above all, don't mix numbered bullets in combination with brackets or parentheses. For example:

2] Line of text.
3] Line of text.
or
(2) Line of text.
(3) Line of text
or worse
2] Line of text
   1] Line of text
   2] Line of text
   3] Line of text

These are reversions to the typewriter mentality and have no place in DTP. If numbered bullets must be used then use an alphabetic combination similar to:

2 Line of text
  a. Line of text
  b. Line of text
3 Line of text

Clipartitis-symptoms:

Too many elements of clipart on the page or the clipart doesn't relate to the article.

Clipart is a graphic that is use to illustrate or enliven the article. One good element of clipart properly used in the layout is superior to many elements that are just pasted in to fill up space. Consideration should be given to keep the layout simple and relevant to the article. For example: An article on Desktop Publishing with a stork and a penguin standing in the center of the page makes little sense. But a graphic of a quill pen leading the eye into the page does.

Pay close attention to the direction in which the clipart leads the eye. For example: If a graphic of an airplane is located in the upper right hand corner of the page and is shown flying to the right, it doesn't lead the reader onto the page, it leads the eye off the page. If that were the only location for the graphic then it should be rotated to be flying left "into" the page.

Often, a proper use of a pull-out or pull-quote serves as a better graphic element than a poorly selected graphic. We tend not to think of these as graphic elements but they are.

When we introduce graphic elements into our publication it is easy to loose the impact of it by surrounding it with additional lines or other cutsies. I saw a pretty good graphic for a headline of a newsletter that was made by stacking pieces of lumber together. The graphic was simple in that the pieces of wood, laid flat, formed a word that identified the company. It was ruined when the editor added shaded lines below it, some circles by it, and fancy text over it. The graphic stopped working and just looked like a mess of lines...sad. Again, less is more.



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Tulsa Computer Society 09/08/97
Don Singleton, President
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