Thinking Critically About

Chapter 5 Document Design, Visual Rhetoric,

and Multimodal Messages
 ◦ Document design, which refers to the format of a text
Document Design on the page, can have a surprising rhetorical impact on
a reader.
and Document ◦ The “look” of a document can signal to readers its
Design Choices purpose, its genre, its intended audience, and its
writer’s ethos.
 ◦ document design choices mainly concern
margins, font style and size, line spacing, and use
of headers or footers.
◦ Generally these choices are dictated by the style
Document Design guidelines of an academic discipline
◦ for example, the guidelines of the American
for Manuscripts Psychological Association, or APA, for psychology

and Papers papers or

◦ the conventions established in a business or professional
setting.
◦ If you deviate from the expected document
design, you risk appearing careless or simply
unaware of academic or professional conventions.
 ◦ Type Type comes in different typeface styles, or fonts, which
are commonly grouped in three font families:
1. Serif fonts have tiny extensions (called serifs) on the letters,
which make them easier to read in long documents. This

Document 2.
book is set in a serif font.
Sans serif fonts lack the extensions on the letters and are
Design for good for labels, headings, and short documents. This is an
example of a sentence set in a sans serif font.
Published 3. Specialty fonts, often used for decorative effect, include
Work script fonts and special symbols.
Document Design for Published Work
◦ Font use varies by genre.
◦ Scholarly print publications usually employ conservative typography: a consistently sized, plain,
highly readable serif font with san serif variations mainly reserved for titles and headings.
◦ Popular magazines, on the other hand, use fonts playfully and artistically;
◦ they vary font styles and sizes to attract readers’ attention and to make articles look pleasingly decorative
on the page.
◦ Although the body text of articles is usually the same font throughout, the opening page often uses a
variety of fonts and sizes.
◦ Font variations may highlight key ideas for readers who are reading casually or rapidly. You may have
noticed that this book uses boldfaced words to call attention to key terms.
 ◦ Layout refers to how the text is formatted on the
page. Layout includes the following elements:
◦ Page size, margin size, proportion of text to
white space
◦ Arrangement of text on the page (single or
multiple columns, spaces between paragraphs)
Space And ◦ Use of justification (alignment of text with the
left or right margins or both margins)
Layout ◦ Placement of titles, use of headings and
subheadings, and spacing before and after
headings
◦ Use of numbered or bulleted lists or of boxes
and sidebars to highlight ideas or break text into
visual units
Colour
◦ Colours make powerful appeals, even affecting
moods.
◦ use colour to identify and set off main ideas or
important information.
◦ Colour-tinted boxes can indicate special features or
allow different but related articles to appear on the
same page.
◦ You will no doubt notice the use of colour ink, tables,
and boxes in this book. Ask yourself: Why has each of
these elements been designed the way it appears?
 ◦ Graphics include visual displays of information such as
◦ tables, line graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, maps,
cartoons, illustrations, and photos.
◦ In scientific articles many of the important findings
may be displayed in complex, technical graphs and
tables.
Graphics and ◦ Sources of information for these graphics are usually
prominently stated, with key variables clearly
Images labelled.
◦ In the humanities and social sciences, content-rich
photos and drawings also tend to be vital parts of an
article, perhaps even the key subject of the analysis.
◦ popular publications often use many drawings or
photos to create appeals to pathos and enhance
interest.