‘Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom’ talks about formatting in the classroom. While most tend to think about formatting, their mind jumps to images, which the authors bring up in the first few paragraphs. As they explain, the visual looks of the text matter just as much. In the intent of the writing is to communicate an idea, the way it’s presented matters just as important. Whether it’s the the shape or font of the text itself, the images if any, or the design elements such as contrast, repetition, alignment, and/or proximity, applying these design principles to the writing is important to expertly show your point.
Personally, I never gave much thought to formatting in my writing. Usually, if I did it was because the assignment called it out, often used in PowerPoint. However thinking about it, it has a greater importance than I realized. When writing in my personal time, I use it quite a lot. A good chunk of my stories are formatted to appear as a textual conversation, made to appear as if it’s happening over text. Not only that, as it’s a chapter story, they are also formatted to have titles along with it being set in chapters. Same with professional writing. In all school writing, it’s required to be in MLA format. I did it, of course, because it was required. But it was formatting and necessary. I never gave it much thought but it was important as it was a grade requirement. Thus, formatting was a bigger part of the writing at hand.
Leave a Reply