TABLE 11.2 Typical Accessing Aids

Icons. Icons are pictures that symbolize actions or ideas. Perhaps the most important icon is the stop sign, which alerts you to a warning. Icons depend on repetition: every time you see the warning icon, you know what kind of information the writer is presenting.

Don’t be too clever in thinking up icons. One computer manual uses a cocktail glass about to fall over to symbolize “tip.” This is a bad idea, because the pun is not functional: when you think of a cocktail glass, you don’t think of a tip for using computers. Don’t use too many different icons, or your readers will forget what each one represents.
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Here green is used to emphasize the titles of the sections, the box at the top left, and the bar along the edge of the page.
Source: Excerpt from MEDIA & CULTURE: MASS COMMUNICATION IN A DIGITAL AGE, Ninth Edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014). Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, Bettina Fabos, p. 113.

Color. Perhaps the strongest visual attribute is color (Keyes, 1993). Use color to draw attention to important features of the document, such as warnings, hints, major headings, and section tabs. But use it sparingly, or it will overpower everything else in the document.

Color exploits the principles of repetition (every item in a particular color is logically linked) and contrast (items in one color contrast with items in another color).

Use color logically. Third-level headings should not be in color, for example, if first- and second-level headings are printed in black.

Using paper of a different color for each section of a document is another way to simplify access.
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Image Credit: © 2014 Macmillan. Photo by Regina Tavani.
 Dividers and tabs. You are already familiar with dividers and tabs from loose-leaf notebooks. A tab provides a place for a label, which enables readers to identify and flip to a particular section. Sometimes dividers and tabs are color-coded. Tabs work according to the design principle of contrast: the tabs literally stick out.

Read . . To learn to …

Ch. 1 connect to the router

Ch. 2 set up a firewall

 Cross-reference tables. These tables, which exploit the principle of alignment, refer readers to related discussions.
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Source: General Services Administration, 2013.
Headers and footers. Headers and footers help readers see where they are in the document. In a book, for example, the headers on the left-hand pages might repeat the chapter number and title; those on the right-hand pages might contain the most recent first-level heading. Sometimes writers build other identifying information into the headers. For example, your instructor might ask you to identify your assignments with a header like the following: “Smith, Progress Report, English 302, page 6.” Headers and footers work according to the principle of repetition: readers learn where to look on the page to see where they are in the document.
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Source: Excerpt from THE BEDFORD GUIDE FOR COLLEGE WRITERS, Tenth Edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014). X. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Marcia F. Murth, pp. 11i, 703, A-21.

Page numbering. For one-sided documents, use Arabic numerals in the upper right corner, although the first page of most documents does not have a number on it. For two-sided documents, put the page numbers near the outside margins.

Complex documents often use two number sequences: lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, and so on) for front matter and Arabic numerals for the body. There is no number on the title page, but the page following it is ii.

Appendixes are often paginated with a letter and number combination: Appendix A begins with page A-1, followed by A-2, and so on; Appendix B starts with page B-1.

Sometimes documents list the total number of pages in the document (so recipients can be sure they have all of them). The second page is “2 of 17,” and the third page is “3 of 17.”

Documents that will be updated are sometimes numbered by section: Section 3 begins with page 3-1, followed by 3-2; Section 4 begins with 4-1. This way, a complete revision of one section does not affect the page numbering of subsequent sections.