A good first impression makes all the difference; a document that seems illegible probably won’t be read.
Just as your business clothes make a clear statement about your professionalism, the appearance of the material you write also makes a statement. If the page is sloppy or looks bad, your experience may be questioned. If the content sounds arrogant, out of date, or unreadable, you may have inadvertently set up a negative response.
Before sending your document, take a good look at it. Does it look tempting? Or is it unpleasant? The white space you see is not simply a lack of print; leads the reader’s eye to the nearest black. If there’s too much black, it looks too hard to read, and readers are reluctant to dive in. They can put it aside, flip through it here and there, or just throw it away right away. Whatever they do, you haven’t impressed them.
So if there aren’t enough white spaces in your document, add some. How? Break any paragraph that is more than two and a half inches long. Use lists. Maintain good margins. Or create a wide column for the text and a narrower column for the “extracted quotes”. By the way, quotation marks are an ideal technique to use in dense documents because they lighten the overall look while repeating an important phrase or sentence from the text and drawing attention to it.
Conversely, if there is too much white space, the material appears disorganized and impossible to read. Of course, you may have a paragraph that is only one sentence long. But if all your paragraphs are single sentences, the document will look like the writer doesn’t really understand what a paragraph is. Fix it up.
Here’s how to improve the appearance of all your documents.
- Think of the white space as an important component of the letter or document. The margins should frame the material, and the text should not appear too dense to read.
- Try to keep the letters to one or two pages. If you need to convey a lot of information, use a cover letter and attach the information.
- Avoid loose things, like a single sentence on a second page.
- Use lists to efficiently move the reader’s eye through the information and to add blank spaces.
- Keep paragraphs to a maximum of four sentences. In a letter, remember to close with a separate “Call to Action” paragraph; don’t write a one paragraph letter.
What you say is important to the reader. only if they bother to read. When you make your material look easy to read,it will actually be read. When your document looks accessible, it is. The truth is that, like it or not, appearance counts.
