Good document design promotes readability and increases the chances that you will achieve your purpose for writing and reach your readers. How you design a document—in other words, how you format it for the printed page or for a computer screen—affects your readers’ response to it. Most readers have certain expectations about how documents should be designed and formatted, usually depending on the context and the purpose of the piece of writing.

This gallery features pages from both academic and business documents. The annotations on the sides of the pages point out design choices as well as important features of the writing.

STANDARD ACADEMIC FORMATTING

STANDARD PROFESSIONAL FORMATTING