Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Proposing Solutions Project
Ayleen Lindahl CW I
4 Cs of content
For the drive-thru reader
Credibility - words, phrases, design that goes to convince reader that the document is sincere and honest. Heavily depends on writing style. Promotional marketese, exaggeration, subjective claims, boasting, emptiness, detract from cred and usability.
Clarity - creating text that is easily readable and clear to expected readers. Keeps focus on information rather than the writer. Uses plain style: writing that doesn't call attention to itself. Topics are made clear by organization and presentation and not by reduction to simplemindedness or dumbing down. Writers use structural elements (page titles headings, lists, and highlighting key words), design elements and diction to create clarity. Clarity is served by making text apparently objective or factual, without marketing hype and without an idiosyncratic (personal) point of view.
Conciseness - textual conciseness is presenting a topic in the most economical manner, compacting, embedding, consolidating text to make the transaction efficient. Conciseness is part of clarity in using reduced verbiage but also includes effective use of text elements such as heads and lists. Like clarity, conciseness is not the same as short and simple.
Coherence - At a macro-level refers to pamphlet design, to structuring content across thepamphlet individual pages. At a micro-level, it refers to placing text on the page, the order of paragraphs, structures of sentences. In print text, coherence is the feel that all parts of the text hold together in clear and logical ways: that is, coherence is the sensing of the principles of organization and structure - the logic - of the page.
Ayleen Lindahl CW I
4 Cs of content
For the drive-thru reader
Credibility - words, phrases, design that goes to convince reader that the document is sincere and honest. Heavily depends on writing style. Promotional marketese, exaggeration, subjective claims, boasting, emptiness, detract from cred and usability.
Clarity - creating text that is easily readable and clear to expected readers. Keeps focus on information rather than the writer. Uses plain style: writing that doesn't call attention to itself. Topics are made clear by organization and presentation and not by reduction to simplemindedness or dumbing down. Writers use structural elements (page titles headings, lists, and highlighting key words), design elements and diction to create clarity. Clarity is served by making text apparently objective or factual, without marketing hype and without an idiosyncratic (personal) point of view.
Conciseness - textual conciseness is presenting a topic in the most economical manner, compacting, embedding, consolidating text to make the transaction efficient. Conciseness is part of clarity in using reduced verbiage but also includes effective use of text elements such as heads and lists. Like clarity, conciseness is not the same as short and simple.
Coherence - At a macro-level refers to pamphlet design, to structuring content across thepamphlet individual pages. At a micro-level, it refers to placing text on the page, the order of paragraphs, structures of sentences. In print text, coherence is the feel that all parts of the text hold together in clear and logical ways: that is, coherence is the sensing of the principles of organization and structure - the logic - of the page.
Elements of pamphlet coherence (macro-structures of design)
- well built info architecture
- pages that can stand alone as rhetorical (effect or style of writing) units of information
- coherence of design
Elements of textual coherence (micro-structures)
- cohesive ties such as repetition, synonyms, reference, conjunction, ellipsis, substitution
use of headings and lists
// posted by Ayleen @ 10:50 PM 
