Unit 7

Organization and Design

• Organization is the logical, systematic ordering of
content
• At the basic level, organization involves creating
the table of contents, headings and subheadings for
your content.
• For most documents, the conventional formula is to
have an abstract, body and a conclusion.
• The technical communicator has to talk with
company about its guidelines.
• Then the technical communicator has to keep
• General readers may be in introduction, table
of contents, graphics, and summaries
• The following are the basic patterns
commonly used in document:
a. chronological: according to timeline, first
event at first and last event at last. For
example: progress report, progress analysis
b. Spatial: to describe the order of place or
the structure of space
• You can describe things from front to rear,
top to bottom, left to right, inside outside.
For example description of mountain
c. Classification and partition: classification is
arranging objects, people or ideas with
common characteristics into categories or
group
• You may classify it according to price and
design
• Partition refers to the process of breaking a
unit into different components
d. List of items: tips, facts, and ideas are listed
in technical document
e. General to specific and specific to
general:
- If the ideas are delivered from general to
particular it becomes general to specific
and if the specific ideas are listed at first
then the general ideas are presented it
becomes inductive
f. Comparison and contrasts: comparing
with similar characteristics and contrasting
focuses of differences between items.
• This is commonly used in catalogues,
brochures
g. Simple to complex: it moves simple concept to
complex
h. Importance: organization in order of increasing
importance and organization in order of decreasing
importance
i. Cause and effect: the communicator starts with
actions and events and then identifies their
results followed by the result.
j. Pros and cons:
k. Problems and solutions:
Document Design:(organization, order, access
and variety)
• It refers to presentation or placement of text
and visuals in a page or screen, and use of
color and typography.
• Proper design helps to make the document
visually appealing and easy to read.
• Williams suggested the following four
elements in a document:
a. Proximity
b. Alignment
c. Repetition
d. contrast
• Sevilla identified color, placement, flow,
alignment, and unity
Organization of a document
The technical communicator can follow the given
techniques:
a. Title
b. Headings
c. White space
d. Rules
e. Section divides and tabs
Order
• Order is concerned with prioritizing
information in a text. The following
techniques can be used to order information:
a. Typeface: there are mainly two types of
typefaces: fonts: serif (easier to read) and
sans-serif (no feet)
b. Type size: the larger size is used for the
primary or first level heading.
c. Density:
d. Spacing:
e. Position: depending on your need you may
use a variety for your headings such as
Access:
A good technical communication document reduces the
burden of reading by focusing on or highlighting main
points and essential ideas in the text. The technical
communicator could consider:
a. white space
b. Bullets
c. Numbering
d. Boldface
e. All caps
f. Underlining
g. Italics
h. boxes
i. Inverse type
j. Pull quotes
k. Font types
l.Colors

Variety
• It adds richness to the documents
• Seize of paper, orientation( portrait
or landscape), column, color and
paper
• The following can be used to
enhance the variety of your
document:
• Print horizontally
• Use more columns
• Vary gutter width
• Use ragged-right margins
Online Design: