Use the strategies below to use document design to make your User Manual polished, professional, and easy to read.

Apply These Strategies to Your Project

• Use standard margins (generally 1") on all sides of your document. Keep your paper to letter size (8.5" by 11"). 
• Choose a font size that is large enough to read without magnification.
• Avoid fonts in all caps, since they decrease readability. See the LinkedIn Learning video “Avoid All Caps and Underlined Text” for more information. The video is free with your VT login. Follow these instructions to login.
• Arrange your text so that it uses flush left, ragged right alignment. See Centered Text Is Harder to Read and the F-Shaped Reading Pattern.
• Apply the design principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity (CRAP) to improve your document design. See Put CRAP in Your Document Design.
• Apply this design advice from the textbook to your draft:
  • Guidelines: Designing Easy-To-Read Text, on pages 286–287
  • Using Color Effectively, on pages 300–302
  • GUIDELINES: Designing Clear, Attractive Pages on page 561
  • Planning for Safety, starting on page 562
• Structure your document so the information is well-organized and easy to navigate. See Chunking Your Paragraphs into Readable Bites and Information-Rich Signposts Help Readers.
• Add strong headings and subheadings to your document. See Using Strong Phrasing in Your Headings and the section on “Titles and Headings” in Chapter 11 of Markel and Selber’s Technical Communication (page 269–271).
• Integrate images smoothly in your documents and include appropriate labels and documentation for all images. See Adding Images to Your Text and Chapter 12 of Markel and Selber’s Technical Communication.

 

Photo credit: ikea - sleep instructions by Chris Dlugosz on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license.