Learning objectives

When you have completed this session, you should be able to

list the basic rules of digital text,
estimate the quantity and quality of digital text,
identify your role in choosing the appropriate style that helps the understanding.

The Digital Text

Written text still remains the standard medium transmitting educating content even in case of a syllabus that contains the highest level visual techniques.

We may think that from the point of view of a final comparison text is the simplest unit, however we can point out that only a few multimedia educational materials or educating content published on the Internet are able to combine the typographic possibilities (font, font size, colors) the way texts could remain comprehensible, well readable, and suitable for studying.

It mustn’t be forgotten that following the typographic rules in case of electronic syllabus is just as important as in the case of printed book designs.

Technology can be very tempting to stylize digital text. We can experience this during a text editing process when working with a computer while making a presentation. We can encounter with many Word processed texts and see that even the basic editing or writing rules were not clear for the authors. What are these basic rules?

You will find some rules below!

The Basic Writing Rules of Electronic Texts Management

Inserting spaces in front of punctuation marks (period, comma, question mark, and exclamation mark) is forbidden but after them is mandatory.

Parentheses must be “closely adjusted“ next to the enclosed text. In front of the opening piece of parentheses there is a space and after it there is no space left. For the closing piece of parentheses it is applicable the other way around.

Don’t use minus mark instead of a dash mark!

After a colon the text must always be started with a small letter.

The text should not be “over ornamented”. There are numerous editing possibilities in the word processor. If we let our work to be influenced by the temptation it becomes tasteless, “kitsch”.

Text management should not be done by using spaces. Paragraphs or any segments of the text organized by spaces usually do not get aligned precisely under one another. Proper tools for formatting texts are tabs, paragraph alignments (to the left, right or center), and rulers used for “regulating” the paragraph or the firs line.

In front of, and in back of a dash mark, special “non extendable” spaces must be inserted from the symbols. Otherwise automatic line brake may remove the dash mark from the text spoiling the esthetic appearance and the comprehensibility as well.

For formatting the text styles must be used which remarkably ease latter modifications. Keeping typographic rules is especially important in case of a projected presentation. We all have seen presentations where “ornaments” made impossible reading the projected presentation content. (The presenter was able to read it well at home in his/her computer but did not take into consideration that the projected material would have a different final effect.)

Pages, where the patter of the text and the color of the letters are not in harmony, can often be seen on the web. This way the text itself becomes unreadable.

In both cases you can see a very disturbing compilation. Texts can be read hardly and they are not so aesthetic. An other mistake in the format of the text (maybe at first sight it cannot be seen) is that there are so called tunnels in the texts. Why is that? Because the text is justifed, but there are not any hyphenation. The word processor stretches the spaces between words. We can often meet this problem in printed media, too.

The minimal expectation from a text appearing in some electronic education context is that the size of the fonts should be readable in every definition.

The readability of a text is determined together by the following factors:

font type ( Times New Roman, Arial , Verdana , etc.)
font style ( bold , italics, underlined, etc.)
the background of the text ( the background of the text )
the selected colors

The Standard Rules of Text Styles

Texts containing all capital letters should not be used at many places,
More than two type of fonts should not be used in one page,
A given page should not be over crowded with text,
Readability can be improved by highlights and frames, (shading).

The Background

The background of the screen changes the disposition of the page. In case of a descriptive text choosing a simple background is practical. The color of the background in this case should be soft. If the aim is to arouse attention bright colored or perhaps patterned background can be used.

Colors

Colors communicate atmospheres, impressions and determine the complete effect. According to experts using saturated colors should be avoided and more than four colors should not be applied in one page. When using different colors do not forget about the color blinds and color missing people. Therefore picture units should be distinguished not only by colors.

In the above mentioned we have tried, without the intention to be exhaustive, to highlight only the standpoints related to the textual part of educational materials that are important to all teachers who apply computer processed materials in class.

However it must be emphasized that in case of a large scale project development it is worth relying on the opinions of experts (typographers, designers).

Let's try it! Exercise

Emphasize the keywords in a short text using a word processor, like Word. Take care about readability and clearness but do not miss the aesthetic look of the text.

Agora What do you think?

Which font and size do you prefer to use? What sort of style do you use for emphasizing a word or expression (color, underline or bold style)?

Please reflect these in your blog!

Reference Works:

[1] Tay Vaughan: Multimedia, Published by Osborne, Berkeley, California, USA,

[2] Csánky Lajos: Multimédia PC-s környezetben. LSI Oktatóközpont, Budapest, 2000.