DOCUMENT FORMATTING

Document formatting refers to the way a document is laid out on the page – the way it looks and is visually organized. Basically, the mechanics of how the words appear on the page forms a good formatting that is consistent, correct ( in terms of meeting any stated requirements), and easy to read. Here are some importance of formatting:

• The visual appeal of a document has an effect on the reader and how they perceive the information, so it’s important in any piece of writing or documentation to be concerned with its formatting.
• Formatting also makes information more accessible to the reader by creating and labeling sections (headings), highlighting key words or ideas (bold, italics, or lists), and making a good impression (professional look and feel, appropriate font choice for the document type).

SIMPLE FORMATTING RULES

In order to create a professional document, it is important to take note of the following golden rules:

1. Keep it simple: Eliminate the temptation to introduce eye-catching elements that only serve to distract. Maximize whitespace. Keep your wording tight and revise any wordy sentences or paragraphs.
2. Choose appropriate font style: Traditional knowledge holds that serif fonts (e.g. Garamond, Geogia, Hoeflex Text, and Palatino etc) are easier to read in print while sans serif fonts (e.g. Arial, Gill sans, Helvetica, and Lucida Sans) are better on the eyes when read on screen. Skip Comic Sans if you want to avoid one of the most common presentation design mistakes.
3. Consistency; Stick to the same typefaces/font style throughout your word document profession. If desired, you can use a different typeface for headings.
4. Use Standard Font size: Business and academic papers generally use 12 point font sizes, which produce the most readable paragraphs. Use bold and Italics for emphasis. The official font size is usually 14. Some information dense reports may sometimes go down to 10 but never less than that.
5. Use Standard Color: Generally, its best keep your hands off anything related to colors, especially for printed documents. You’ll have to pay more for the color ink, and it won’t carry over if the document ever gets copied.
6. Use Standard Page size: Nearly all office documents are formatted on the same page size as they are printed on A4. This is the only size that’s guaranteed to be available regardless of which printer you use.
7. Use Standard Page Margins: Most style manuals and style guides call for a 1 inches (normal) margin on all sides of the page which produces the best readability for line lengths and allows for written annotations if necessary. However, if the document is going to be bound in a binder, you may want to use custom margins to increase the side margins to 1 and half inches to accommodate the rings.
8. Appropriate Paragraph Alignment: For official purpose and where typographic rivers must be avoided, it is important to use left alignment for your documents. But where reverse is the case, justifying your documents makes it visually comfortable.
9. Indent the First Lines of Paragraphs: this is to make each paragraph stand out. However, Paragraphs directly following a section heading can be without indent since the surrounding context makes it clear that it’s its own paragraph. It is important to use MS Word’s paragraph styling features to handle the indents rather than using the Tab key!.
10. Place Images between Paragraphs:  Inserting images is part of designing your Word document. It may be okay to place images inside a paragraph and allow the surrounding text to follow around it, but generally speaking, it can damage readability, especially in data-driven reports. The safest option, particularly for graphs, charts, and tables, is to put images in between paragraphs and ken them center aligned.
11. Appropriate Line Spacing: Line spacing refers to the whitespace that separates a line from the next line of text. The size of the space depends on what kind of document you’re writing. You can use double-spacing if no style guide exists. Business and office documents tend to be single-spaced to minimize the number of pages needed when printing, but digital documents may be easier to read if spaced at somewhere between 120-150 percent.
12. Break Up Text with Headings & Lists: Headings helps you organize your documents into sections, subsections, and headings which make it easier to read and visualize. Lists are good for breaking up walls of text and drawing eyes to important points. Numbering is used when counting a set of items or when providing step-by-step instructions while Bullets are also used for listing when step-by-step arrangement is not required. It is important to avoid overusing lists.
13. Appropriate Section Breaks: In MS Word, Section breaks allow you to differentiate certain pages with changes in orientation, columns, headers, footers, page numbers, and more. This come in four forms; (i) Next Page: Start the next section on a fresh-following page. (ii) Continuous: Start the next section on the current page. (iii) Even Page: State the next section on the next even page. (iv) Odd Page: start the next section on the next odd page. If your document is large enough to need chapters, this is the best way to format them in a clean way. Each chapter should start on a fresh page.

TYPES OF FORMATTING

There are many ways to format a technical or professional document. Assignments may specify formatting requirements, but if a style is not dictated, maintain a clear and consistent format throughout the document.

For instance, when combining work form multiple team members, details like slight differences in font size or line spacing are easy to miss, but these subtle inconsistencies detract from the overall professionalism of your document. Sloppy formatting will reflect poorly on your abilities, and your audience may lose confidence in your message.

Document Formatting is broadly divided into; Layout formatting, Font formatting, Image formatting, Shape formatting, Paragraph formatting, equation formatting, Chart/graph formatting, and table formatting.

LAYOUT FORMATTING

Layout Formatting or Page Layout is one of the most important aspects of document formatting. The role professional or poor layout formatting plays in the presentation and acceptance of document makes it a very critical part of every document. It boards specifically on; Page orientation, Page size, Page column and Page margin.

All settings regarding layout formatting can be found on the Page Layout on the menu bar.  You can make layout designs in Microsoft Word from scratch or by using Microsoft templates. Envato Elements and GraphicRiver are great sources of print templates for Word.

1. Page Orientation: MS Word offers two page orientations; landscape and portrait. The choice is usually depended on the type of document and the recipients or authority of such documents.
2. Page Size: The default size for every new document you open on MS Word is usually letter. But the official and general page size is A4. Other sizes can be utilized depending on the type of document you intent to create.
3. Page Margin: A margin is the space between the text and the edge of your document. By default, a new document’s margins are set to Normal (1 inches) depending on your needs, MS Word allows you to change your document’s margin size.
4. Page Columns: This formatting tool make easy-to-read documents that reflect positively on the reader and the owner of the document by dividing a selected part or the entire document into columns. This can make the document more readable and adds variety to an otherwise monotonous layout and manage space especially when it is of necessity. Columns are popular in magazines, newsletters, and similar types of materials.

FONT FORMATTING

Formatted text can draw the reader’s attention to specific parts of a document and emphasize important information. In MS Word, there are several options for adjusting text including;

1. Font style such as Serif (Times New Roman, Garamond, Cambria, Geogia, Palatino), San Serif (e.g. Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Verdana, Treuchet Ms), Comic Sans or Script (Brush script, Zapfino, Lucida Handwriting) & Monospace (e.g. Courier New, Consolas, American Typewriter).
2. Font size (growing and shrinking font ).
3. Font outline.
4. Font Case (UPPERCASE, lower case, Sentence case, Capitalize Each Word, tOGGLE cASE).
5. Font color (shading, highlighting and font color), and alignment (left, Center, Right and Justify).
6. Bold, Italicize & Underlining; applied to headings or certain words to make them outstanding or more obvious.

PARAGRAPH FORMATTING

A paragraph is a bloc of text which explains a specific idea, concept or point in a given document. Traditionally, documents are written out in several paragraphs, each paragraph represents a particular point. In MS Word, a paragraph is any chunk of text that ends when you press the Enter key. So a single character, a word, a sentence, or document full of sentences is a paragraph, so long as your press the Enter key.

Paragraph formatting is a change in the format of text that affects an entire paragraph or it’s different from other paragraphs in a document. Such formatting options could include basically, alignment, font type, font size, highlighting, and indentation. As you design your document and make formatting decisions, you will need to consider line and paragraph spacing. You can increase spacing to improve readability and reduce it to fit more text on the page. Below are some paragraph formatting options;

1. Line spacing: space between each line in a paragraph which could be single spaced or double spaced. The default spacing in MS Word is 1.08 lines, slightly larger than single spaced.
2. Paragraph Spacing: enable you to adjust the space before and after paragraphs. This is useful for separating paragraphs, headings and subheadings.