Night Owl 6/Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso/020a/dtpinfo1.zip/BETTER.PUB

Text File | 1992-02-04 | 11KB | 226 lines

"Use every chance to communicate in your publication"

--Headlines, photos, photo captions, writing, design, and typography
provide opportunities to make your publication a more effective
communication tool--

By Sheri Rosen (Assistant Sysop)

I don't have time to write this article, and you certainly don't
have time to read it. Your own work keeps you busy enough, and
you've got other things to think about.

That's the way it is with organizational and business publications,
too. No one really has time to read them--not thoroughly or
regularly.

To assume that your readers have better things to do than read
your publication--and when they do read it, they aren't
concentrating very hard--is not an excuse for complacency among
editors. Instead, direct extra effort toward drawing readers into the
material, or if they really are too busy or lazy to read it, toward
telling them the important and interesting points without their
having to read the entire article.

You have several chances to capture your readers.

HEADLINES

Starting at the top, you have the headline. Write it for the reader,
not for the space.

The best headline communicates to readers what the article is
about. If you write such a headline, readers interested in that topic
will start reading the article. People not interested will have more
of their scant remaining reading time to spend with another article
that may interest them; faced with a vague headline, people may
read the first paragraph or two of the article only to find out they
really weren't interested in it after all. Wasted time.

Clever headlines may snag readers into the lead, but when they
find out that they're not interested in that topic, they go on to
something else anyway. You have wasted some readers' time that
could have been spent absorbing information from another article.

PHOTOS

Perhaps more than the headline, readers are attracted first to the
photographs. Everyone looks at the pictures, right? Wrong.

A half page of postage-stamp-sized photos of management trainees
with their six-week training certificates won't hold interest for
long. Dull photographs aren't any more inviting than dull stories.
Skipping the syllabus of the Wednesday night photography class,
here are some tips for the editor who must also be photographer.

Plan for a photograph like you plan for an interview. Know what
you want to communicate before you go to get the shot.

A building, a piece of equipment, or any other inanimate object
will stay still for you to shoot. So will people, but make sure they
don't. The first step to assure that is to avoid setting up a photo
session. Everything looks posed because it is. Instead, capture the
moment. For example, do you want a picture of people at work?
Then shoot them at work, don't make them do some work for the
photo.

Ask to take photos of the company president during a business
meeting, for example, to catch her or him in a natural setting. If
you can join in on a long meeting--not the 15-minute briefing--
your subject will become unaware of the camera as the meeting
progresses.

With a medium telephoto lens, you can stay back from the center
of action, yet catch the movement and expressions peculiar to your
subject. Because the president is conversing with someone as you
shoot the photograph, it will appear on the printed page as though
the president were talking, motioning, expressing something
directly to the reader.

Adding human value means knowing not what a subject LOOKS like
but what a subject IS like. Your photograph should say something,
not just reflect superficial appearance. You've avoided the dull
photograph.

CAPTIONS

If an interesting photograph snags a readers' fleeting attention, he
or she instinctively will look to the caption below. Since people look
to captions, give them something worth reading, especially when
they may not read the article. You may argue that a particular
photograph doesn't need a caption--that the photo needs no further
explanation--but why pass up another chance to communicate with
your audience?

Simply explaining what the picture portrays is not the best use of
the caption, anyway. Certainly, some photographs need further
explanation for understanding. But all captions should have another
element--the relevance of the photograph to the story.

Don't destroy an interesting photograph of a person with a caption
that reads: "Jane Jones, executive." Tell the reader the relevance
of the photograph to the story as a way of telling the reader about
the story. Try: "Explaining the XYZ company's model benefits
program for employee legal services, Jane Jones spoke the National
Council of Human Resource Managers."

With that kind of caption, and the photograph, in concert with the
headline, you may have convinced readers to start reading the
article, or at least given them an informative summary of the
topic.

WRITING

Write (or edit!) the article for the reader, not for the publication.
Keep the reader in mind. Tell the story to a person, not the
keyboard.

A common way to do this is to humanize the article. People like to
read about other people. An obvious example is to tell the
employee benefits story through an individual who was able to use
the legal services plan, to use the previous example.

Often, who is involved is as important as what is involved.

Perhaps you've hooked your human reader with a humanized
article. Make sure the writing is orderly, to direct the reader
through the article. Each fact presented should build on the
previous fact. Any divergence from this pattern will interrupt your
transition and break your flow--enough that the reader may
choose to turn the page.

An orderly presentation of material is not the same as a clear
presentation, so concentrate on making each sentence
understandable. The concentration you put into presenting clear
ideas may prevent your reader from having to concentrate to
understand what point you're trying to make. And, for an
inattentive reader, closing the publication takes less concentration
than trying to figure out an unclear article.

TYPOGRAPHY

Easy reading is characterized by more than the mind's clear
understanding. Make it easy on the eye, too. Your publication's
typeface is important. Nine or ten point type certainly allows for
more space--for more type, photographs, or white space. But if a
large percentage of the readership is graying at the temples and
trying to avoid the switch to bifocals, it doesn't want to be
challenged by small type.

Try 11 or 12 point type, and remember that the x-height is more
crucial than actual point size. As a rule, the larger the height of
the lowercase x, the more readable the face in body copy.

All your efforts to this point are laudable, but you can't interest all
of the people all of the time. Let's assume you lost some readers on
a story. But wait, you say. Some important and interesting
information is in there.

DESIGN

You do have another chance to communicate it to them. Give the
facts to the reader in a way that he or she does not have to read
the whole article. For example, short traditional newsletters simply
underline the major points (the Kiplinger Newsletter remains the
premier example) or use bold or italic type to highlight.

Tabloid and magazine format readers are less likely to navigate
endless columns of type--even to pick out the major points. Help
these readers by prominently displaying important points.

For example, add break-out blurbs (also called read-out or pull
quotes) to your story design. These are sentences lifted from the
article and printed in large bold type, or in italics between two
thin rules, or next to oversized quotation marks, or in a second
color, or any other method of emphasis and display. Consumer
magazines use them constantly and organizational publications are
beginning to catch on.

Pick out several sentences you think readers ought to read, or
would have enjoyed reading, had they finished the article. A
cleverly worded phrases, an important fact to help them in their
jobs, or a concise capsulation of the matter at hand--each would
make a good break-out blurb. Display it.

Place blurbs carefully. One placed in the middle of a long column of
copy may cause a break in a reader's concentration as he or she
reads down that column. That's why many publications confine
break-outs to the top, bottom, or sides of the page. For
newsletters, consider using a two-and-a-half column grid. Stories go
in the two columns. Blurbs go in the half-column.

GRAPHICS AND SIDEBARS

Another means of imparting information in a glance is with simple,
interesting charts and graphs. Sometimes a picture *is* worth a
thousand words, and you can plot the relevant information for the
busy or inattentive reader. Avoid any chart the reader would have
to really study to understand. For example, if the focus of your
article is on the increasing number of telecommuting workers, a
chart or graph can impart that fact--along with figures--without
labored reading.

Sometimes several important points can't be charted, but listing
them would be appropriate. Put those points in a sidebar, box it, or
print it over a light screen, and you're calling attention to material
the reader may choose to review without reading the entire
article. Using the telecommuting article example, a quick list of
telecommuting advantages can complement the chart, painlessly
providing the gist of the material to the lazy reader.

These techniques benefit the editor as well as the reader. Break-out
blurbs, graphs, and sidebars also are good graphic techniques. As
they are incorporated on the page, design ceases to be decoration
and becomes part of better communication. It all leads to a better
publication, one in which design projects information, as opposed to
containing or holding information.

And of course, if readers like these bits of important or interesting
information the editor has worked so hard to present to them,
they may--yes--go back and read the whole article. With
interesting display, readers may find the publication more inviting
and choose to spend more time with the issue. By working a little
harder to impart the message, you can communicate, even though
your readers may not be working nearly so hard at paying
attention.