Ten questions to ask if you're writing a scrutiny report #10: Does it look good?

After all that effort, don’t spoil everything by making the report look bad.

Good formatting makes the text look easy on the eye.  A few simple rules will help you succeed where all too many scrutiny reports are failing.

 

Never use full justification.  Creating rectangular blocks of text makes life harder for the reader’s eye: it cannot cope easily with the different gaps between words on different lines; and it cannot easily find the end of the line of text.  Result: ‘vertical drift’, in which the eye drifts up or down, away from the line it should be reading.

 

Widen your margins.  The left margin, in particular, will benefit from widening, almost to double the size of the right margin.  This ‘scholars’ margin’ is a useful space for making notes.

Raise your point size.  Use nothing smaller than 11 point. 12 point is a good standard size.

 

 

 

Choose your typeface carefully.  Serif typefaces – such as Times, Baskerville or Century – tend to be easier to read on paper; sanserif typefaces – such as Verdana, Tahoma, Gill or Trebuchet – tend to be easier to read on screen. 

 

 

 

 

Use all the useful apparatus.  Think about the way you display title, headings, page numbers and graphics.  Everything should contribute to a professional, easy-to-scan document.

And finally:

Don't use Arial.  Please!

 

 

 

Good examples of scrutiny reports are available from the London Assembly website. 

 

 

 

 

If you like what you see here, you might like to contact me to discuss working with you.  I am currently working with one of the scrutiny team of a major local assembly in the UK.  I run training courses, and coach individual writers.  I can even give you some feedback on the reports your team is producing, if you want nothing more.  Go to my website to take a look at a sample training programme.