IAE@CU.NIH.GOV ("Irene Anne Eckstrand") (06/12/91)
Attached (and slightly edited) are some comments made by Dan
Wheeler about constructing messages for electronic communications.
irene eckstrand
iae@cu.nih.gov
I have some professional background in visual cognition and a
strong amateur interest in graphic design. There is a consensus
about some of the issues involved in page layout.
First, on line length. Long lines DO make text harder to read.
When the eye moves back to the beginning of the line, you are more
likely to lose your place if the line is too long. Designers can
compensate for long lines by increasing the spacing between
lines. But the major method for dealing with wide pages is to
use multiple columns. Neither spacing nor multiple column
formatting are usable tools given the current state of email
systems.
Second, on white space. (It is white space on a printed page.
On my screen it is blue space.) Large blocks of solid type are
difficult to read. There should be margins around the text. It
helps to leave blank lines between paragraphs. It is NOT a waste
of paper or screen space to leave some of it blank.
Third, on all caps. Material in ALL CAPS is more difficult to
read. The variations in letter shapes and word shapes are
greater in the lower case alphabet, making them easier to
recognize. The convention of regarding all caps as "shouting" in
electronic communications is a good one from the point of view of
readability and design.
Finally, graphic designers always design for the reproduction
system that is going to be used to distribute the work. I assume
that most communications are going to be displayed on a
screen showing at most 25 row of 80 characters and printed on
fixed-pitch printers at either 10 or 12 characters per inch.
This will change, but for now I regard these as the
characteristics for which my electronic work should be designed.
The people with systems capable of displaying proportionally
spaced fonts with high resolution are also those people who can
reformat text easily to make it look any way they want.
So specifically, here is what I do:
1) I use a line length of 65 characters. This leaves what
I regard as reasonable margins on an 80-character screen.
This also gives 1 inch margins when printed on a 10 pitch
printer with an 8.5 inch wide piece of paper. I regard
anything over 72 characters as too long for the output
devices in most common use.
2) I leave white space. I put blank lines between
paragraphs and use indentation where appropriate. For
instance, these paragraphs could have been done as
numbered, but not indented. But using indentation adds
white space, creates variation in appearance, and serves
to direct attention to these points.
3) I write in shorter paragraphs when I write for email
distribution. The reader ought to be able to see at
least a full paragraph at once. I try not to write
paragraphs that are longer than about 2/3 of a screen.
When I write something for paper distribution, I feel
free to write much longer paragraphs.
Peace, Dan
<< Daniel D. Wheeler Internet: Dan.Wheeler@UC.Edu >>
<< Education & Psychology Bitnet: wheeler@ucbeh >>
<< University of Cincinnati Phone: (513)556-3607/861-3941 >>
<< Cincinnati, OH 45221-0002 FAX: (513)556-2483 >>roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (06/12/91)
IAE@CU.NIH.GOV ("Irene Anne Eckstrand") writes: > Attached (and slightly edited) are some comments made by Dan > Wheeler about constructing messages for electronic communications. Dan gave a lot of good suggestions, but I'd like to add a few things of my own, specifically having to do with follow-up messages or replies. There is a convention that has grown up regarding quoting the text of a message you are replying to, which is to start each line of quoted material with "> ", like I did above. Many software packages do this automatically. It's important to quote enough text so that a reader can put your response in the proper context. I can't tell you how many pieces of email I've gotten which just said "Yes" and I don't have a clue what the person is talking about. People would never dream of sending somebody a paper letter or memo that just said "Yes", so I don't understand why they do it with email. On the other hand, you don't have to include the entire message, just the relevant parts. With the particular software package and medium I'm using (i.e. rn and usenet), Irene's message was assigned a unique "Message ID" when she sent it; that ID is shown in the "References:" header of this message; if anybody wanted to find out more about what Irene said, they should be able to look up the entire text of her article using that ID, just like they would with a reference in an article in a paper journal. -- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy "Arcane? Did you say arcane? It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"
kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) (06/13/91)
> On the other hand, you don't have to include the entire message, > just the relevant parts. This presumes that people have learned how to use the editor (usually user-unfriendly vi, emacs, etc) with their mail system. Quite often this is not the case unfortunately.
harper@finsun.csc.fi (Robert Harper) (06/13/91)
In <CMM.0.88.676757261.kristoff@genbank.bio.net> kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) writes:
RS>> On the other hand, you don't have to include the entire message,
RS>> just the relevant parts.
DK>This presumes that people have learned how to use the editor (usually
DK>user-unfriendly vi, emacs, etc) with their mail system. Quite often
DK>this is not the case unfortunately.
An when there are alot of comments to the same topic and you have no idea
that >> refers to Roy Smith and > refers to Dave Kristofferson it is
sometimes useful to put their initials before the right arrow.
This can been done very easily under emacs with the replace-regexp command.
-=ROB=-
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