Design tips - some pointers for improving the look of your printing projects This article is paraphrased from the book "Desktop Publishing & Design for Dummies" by Roger C. Parker. It is one of our favourite books and has some fantastic advice for non-designers and budding designers alike. Five ways to improve simple everyday documents Never Underline Take a hammer and disable your underlining key. Only kidding! At minimum, remove the underlining button from your toolbar or icon bar. Underlining is bad news. Underling is bad because it obscures the shapes of your words, and readers recognise words by their shape. Underlining is also ugly. Notice how the line intersects the descenders (portions of characters that extend below the baseline) or letters like g, j, y and p. Alternatives to underlining include boldface, italic, and small caps. Align Text with Pre-printed Rules and Logos Align the left and right margins of your correspondence with pre-printed elements such as header and footer rules, logos, or address information. Letterheads project "devil may care" attitude when the text area does not line up with text or graphic elements on your stationery. You'll be surprised at the major improvement that takes place when you line up text elements. Adjust Paragraph Spacing Avoid duplicate paragraph spacing. Use one and only way to indicate new paragraphs. Do not both indent the first line of new paragraphs and add extra space between paragraphs. Do not press Enter or Return twice between paragraphs. If you are indenting the first line of new paragraphs, make sure you really want to use the standard, default, half-inch indent (a shallower indent is usually sufficient). If you are adding extra space between paragraphs, paragraph spacing equal to 1½ lines is usually enough to visually indicate a new paragraph without unnecessarily spacing out text on the page. Use Symbols Whenever Possible Avoid spelling out words like copyright, percent, registered and trademark. Replace them with tht appropriate typeset symbols (©, %, ® and ¢). These can be accessed through the Character Map Utility that is on most versions of Windows® operating systems. In addition, when using fractions, see whether a pre-built fraction symbol isn't already available in the font you're using. Typeset fractions, such as 1¼, 2½ and 3¾ look a lot better than 1 1/4, 2 1/2 and 3 3/4. Many Expert fonts contain additional fractions. Finally, replace asterisks (*) with bullets (•), empty or filled ballot boxes (o, n) and daggers (†) in lists. Check out the symbols available in fonts like Zapf Dingbats or Wingdings. Eliminate excess space in lists Avoid pressing the spacebar between dollar signs and the numbers they introduce, or numbers and cents signs that follow. Likewise, eliminate space between numbers and percentage symbols. Dollars and cents signs, percentage symbols, and so on should appear right next to the they introduce or follow. E.g. $1.00 not $ 1.10. When you create numbered or bulleted lists, use shallower indents than the defaults typically provide. Most word processing programs add unnecessary space between the bullet or number and the text that follows, creating distracting gaps. Also, turn off paragraph spacing for lists, it looks better when bullet point lists run at the same line spacing without huge gaps between points.

Taken from the Book 'Desktop Publishing & Design for Dummies' by Roger C. Parker. Published by IDG Books 1995.