HIGHLIGHTING – Making
your Writing more attractive to the reader, and easier to understand.
(this
can be used for your visuals, too, in an oral presentation.)
You can help your
reader and yourself by using a few simple page layout strategies and tactics in
your writing (and in your visuals for oral presentations).
How many times have
you wondered how to clearly communicate so much information, so many
regulations, the details of a new policy, or the reasons why your idea was
best?
Look at the
suggestions below for some help. There
may be others that you like to use, but it writing memos and reports, ALWAYS keep to one font (text style) if possible.
When you want
information to stand out clearly in a list, use Bullets
idea one
idea two
idea
three
Sometimes you can
center the information from the rest of the paragraph
item one
item two
item three
but, you may not want to make a list. So, you can number the ideas within your
paragraph like this: Here are (1) idea,
(2) idea, and
(3) idea.
Other times, you can
use bold to emphasize a word. Or italics to show something important or special. Even CAPTIAL letters help, too. And you can underline words. Or, in e-mail or websites, you can use color.
Occasionally, it is
necessary to separate information apart from the text, so you can use a box
P-L x D/12 =
When you have lots of
information that you need to group together into sections, it is effective to
use HEADINGS (look at the short report
format for these [SUMMARY
BACKGROUND,etc.])
Sometimes, too, if
you want to be clever, you can combine these tactics. But be careful not to overuse these or your
writing will become less effective – like putting an exclamation mark (!) after
even sentence. The highlighting will
lose its power.