Arranging your text
Arrangement of text
- Different browsers, screens and computer settings affect how your page is viewed and whether everything on it can be displayed
- Be careful about using lots of colours, it can make the website look too garish
- Try to keep pages fairly short, and break long pages into several shorter ones.
It is useful to keep down the amount of text per page; screen after screen of text is dull and unlikely to be read - Don't cram in text; use headings to help break it up. You can use larger size letters in lower case bold to highlight headings. Break complex information into bullet points
- Leave lots of blank space. Start lots of new paragraphs and leave plenty of space between objects. Keep your sentences short where possible
- Capital letters should not be used for anything other than proper names. If in doubt, leave in lower case as it makes reading the text much easier. Never use capitals for whole sentences as it is difficult to read and is equivalent to shouting. If you want to emphasise something use lower case bold
- Don't underline text as it could be mistaken for a clickable link. Avoid italics they can be hard to read on screen
To ensure everyone can read your Word documents it’s a good idea to convert them into PDFs, but you will need to buy the appropriate software. You can purchase online from http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/main.html or any online retailer.
The free Adobe Acrobat reader can be down loaded from: www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readermain.html
