Think long-term and be kind to readers with well-formatted documents
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Think long-term and be kind to readers with well-formatted documents

It’s something of a paradox. But the space you leave blank in your documents matters.  Compare these two forms discussed in an article about the importance of white space by the Nielsen Norman Group. (They help clients make users of their websites, applications, and products happier.) As the article says, The recreated Walgreens.com registration form (right) is…

Manage what your readers think you mean with effective paragraphs
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Manage what your readers think you mean with effective paragraphs

Paragraph construction affects whether — and how fast — readers get a writer’s intended meaning. But getting the visual units (white space surrounding lines of text) to match the semantic units (what linguists call “episodes” made up of sentences) in a message isn’t that easy. Research shows readers aren’t good at dividing a document back into the…

Unexpected results of research on format and parallelism
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Unexpected results of research on format and parallelism

I regularly advise writers to use grammatical parallelism and visual formatting to influence document quality. (Use the links if you don’t know what I mean.) But I saw some evidence presented by colleagues at a recent conference that led me to refine that advice. Here’s the bottom line for those who don’t want the details: Use…

Want satisfied workplace readers? Give them an efficient reading experience
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Want satisfied workplace readers? Give them an efficient reading experience

Efficiency. One of the greatest challenges for amateur workplace writers, who have not yet wrapped their heads around the fact that their colleagues do not read like  teachers do. I’ve made the point many times that teachers are obligated to read their students’ documents thoughtfully. And that workplace readers actually read the same way writers…