Improving Readability with Strategic Document Design

When you compose a message, you want your audience to find the information it needs quickly and to understand it. Your message should be easy to read and comprehend.

Strategic use of white space improves document readability. Which of these techniques employ white space? Check all that apply.

• Using a serif typeface
• Using all caps
• Breaking paragraphs into shorter chunks
• Using justified alignment

Margins determine the reading area of a document.

Complete the following sentence about margins and alignment with the best choices.

Centered text is appropriate only for  , and left- and right-justified alignment is used most often with  messages.

Typeface, font, and size influence how your message is read.

Review the selection, and determine whether the following statement about typeface and font is true or false.

A wide variety of typefaces are available for business writers. Different typefaces suggest different purposes and occasions.

True or False: Boldface, caps, and italics are typefaces.

• True
• False

Headings are important for visual impact and readability. Which of these sentences about headings are true? Check all that apply.

• Headings often appear in business reports.
• Headings should not be used in formal documents.
• Headings increase the skim value of a message.

Read the following sentence, and determine which technique is most applicable to improve its readability.

I want to inform you of an opportunity that you could be a part of.

• Developing parallelism
• Eliminating redundancies
Reducing wordy noun phrases

Choose the heading that is best at highlighting information and improves readability.

• Outline of Proposed Benefits
• There Are Several Potential Benefits Here