Principles of form

Templates and Style sheets

• The importance of format

  • Studies indicate the difference in grades between a well formatted assginment and poorly formatted assginment is 10-15%

  • The format is the first thnig readers see. Readers make judgemnts based on what they see

    • do you attend to detiails
    • are you organized
    • are you interested in the topic
    • do you respect the reader

• Form and format are rhetorical

  • Generally form is conceived as a container into which you can place any kind of content

  • ex.

    • Would you write a love letter using a business letter format?
      • during the Victorian era, love letters read much like business letters because marrige was thought of a s a business partnership

• The essay form

  • Essays were invented by Michel de Montaigne

    • the essay form has been used by teachers to torture students

• Master styles and templates

  • styles ensure a consistent appearance

• White space

• White space and separation

  • Ensure that you have an enter then tab so there is a white space

  • Make sure the text of the figure is seen

    • make sure the figure caption is close to the figure
    • make sure the figure appears near where it is first mentioned

  • Make sure there the text is nice, as when its tightly packed reader will assume its complex

Print quality

• Form and print quality

  • the quality of the print profoundly affects the ability of readers to easily process text

  • Serifed vs sans serif fonts

    • Serifed fonts are usually for papers
    • sans serif fonts are more used for professional stuff
      • Be consistent with fonts

• Paragraph justification

  • Dont hyphenate headings or subheadings

    • avoid hyphenating three or more lines

• Margins and scan length

  • Standard margins

  • Scholars margins

• Positions of emphasis

  • Put titles in the top middle

  • Put more important stuff in the top left and the bottom right

    • and put stuff with less emphasis in top right and bottom left

Conventions of form