In recent posts we’ve discussed how Jan V. White, the eminent designer, integrates graphics with copy to win readers. Another lesson follows. Readers usually examine a printed piece more than once. Even if it’s only a couple of pages, we first do a quick scan to determine its length and content and decide whether there’s [...]
Author Archives: Leslie Rigby Magnificent Publications Inc.
What to Say About People with Disabilities
January 4, 2008Careful writers and editors take pains to avoid bias in language, but many style guides offer only general advice. An exception is the Guidelines for Reporting and Writing about People with Disabilities, developed by the Research and Training Institute on Independent Living at the University of Kansas. Reflecting the input of more than 100 national [...]
Help Pull Quotes Do Their Job
December 6, 2007In recent posts we’ve discussed how Jan V. White, the eminent designer, integrates graphics with copy to win readers. Another lesson follows. In Editing by Design, White describes pull quotes as “snare elements” that (like captions) pull the reader into the story by arousing attention and making information easy to scan. Although a pull quote [...]
Make Your Next Intellectual Info-Unit a Great One
November 30, 2007In a recent post, we discussed how Jan V. White, the eminent designer, integrates graphics with copy to win readers. Another lesson follows. Most editors I know put off writing captions until the very last minute. Instead, try writing them first. In Editing by Design, White points out: “Picture captions are the most important words [...]
A Free Thinker Liberates a Standard Page
November 28, 2007In a recent post, we discussed a few of the many valuable lessons to be learned from Jan V. White, the eminent designer who treats graphics as elements to integrate with copy for the purpose of winning readers. Another of his lessons: We work frequently on publications with standardized formats, and it’s tempting to just [...]
Posted in Design Leave a comment
Online Counters Speed Up Headline Writing
November 9, 2007Great headlines come easily to few of us. Our catchiest and most elegant often unravel when they go into layout and emerge much too short or a tad too long for the prescribed format, even if we’ve diligently run them through the character count tool in MS Word or measured letters, spaces, and each and [...]
With Colleagues Overseas, Time Is Always on Your Side
November 2, 2007Over the many years in South Africa when I worked for clients in the U.S., I came to appreciate the benefits of collaborating across time zones. Transatlantic teamwork gives you almost an entire extra workday. So while I was six hours ahead of my stateside colleagues, as is most of Europe, we got into a [...]