In their article “Beyond Black on White” Michael Klein and Kristi Shackelford put forth a myriad of ways for writers (specifically college students) to differentiate their written work visually from that of the work of those around them. These include varying things like images, fonts, headings, etc.
I have probably done somewhere within the vicinity of one-hundred different written assignments for college so far. If you were to lay every page of those out on the floor and had me look at them, I would have literally no way to tell you which was which without carefully reading the title. There are times where I feel almost shackled to the style of formatting that I use. Even in my own free time where I write quite frequently for fun, I still adhere to the same standards as academic work. I always use Times New Roman, twelve point font, and one inch margins. A part of my reasoning for this is my own comfort as it is what I am used to, but I am sure that another part of it is that doing anything different to it makes me feel as though whatever I am writing does not really matter. In this way, I can see that my education has conditioned me to the point that I am essentially ensnared in these pretty rigid restrictions when it comes to formatting my documents.
For these reasons I was very intrigued by this article. Reading it made me realize the real purpose (or lack thereof) of many of the things I just do without thinking. For example, bolding things like headings in my documents could be helpful in showing the reader where certain sections stop or start. Sometimes just a paragraph break is not enough to show that I am switching gears. I plan on implementing more of these visual ideas in my writing in the future so that my written work stands out more (in a good way) from others.
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