When writing an essay or piece of literature, it may seem that the formal and design of the paper may not matter. You may think, “The words are the only thing that are important!” Although the message you want to express with your words are the main focal point of the essay you are writing, the formatting and way you communicate your words are very important as well, as they can help you better express the ideas you want to get across.
In Melanie Gagich’s article titled, “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing,” she goes over the five modes of communication and how each is important. The five modes are:
1: Visual – What your audience sees, such as a graph or chart that supports a claim you make by showing data that proves how your idea is true and accurate.
2: Linguistics – The words used to express your ideas. Your choice of words are important as you need to be mindful of the audience you are writing to, as you don’t want your writing to be too complicated or too simple.
3: Spatial – The space between your text. This refers to the text being single spaced, double spaced, etc.
4: Gestural – Used for verbal speech or presentations, this refers to the motions you make with body parts like your hands or face. These gestures can help you in expressing your idea better.
5: Aural – This refers to your speech, and how effective it is. When speaking, you want to avoid longs pauses and filler words like “um”.
In Michael J. Klein’s article titled, “Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom,” he goes into how you can improve your essay’s formatting and design. He goes into various tips like how you should make sure the text size isn’t too small or too big, or picking a font style that is eligible and easy to read. Overall, these two articles provide very helpful advice to improve the composition and formatting of your writings and essays.
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