Meryl's Notes Blog

Michael Stelzner asks how a document’s appearance engages readers and he also shares lessons from a well-formatted paper. Yes, formatting matters.

My mom’s (Happy Birthday!) three kids are power users with careers revolving around computers and the web. Yet, she sends long emails where she gives the impression her Enter key is broken. I gently remind her to create paragraphs for easier reading as it’s hard to keep track of your place in a long note.

A long article without bold headers, bullets, or whitespace easily loses me. I’m a content scanner and studies reveal that most people scan when it comes to online content. The same often applies to white papers and other long business documents. Once in a while, a reader reads these documents word-for-word especially if the reader is interested in making a business decision regarding the subject.

Stelzner shows an example of a white paper’s use of a colored page with nothing but a quote. This reminds me of ads I see in magazines like Direct and BtoB where the ad contains a dark background and a thin font. This makes readers work harder in viewing the ad. But an ad that pleases the eye has a greater chance of grabbing reader attention.

That’s the point Donald A. Norman makes in Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. From a content perspective, using bold headers, whitespace, bullets, appropriate images, and other content formatting engages more readers than one with small font and little formatting.