Simple design of texts
Over the past month, I’ve been able to process about five hundred Word pages with complex and heterogeneous content on the web: tables with nested cells, several levels of headings, five types of quotes, underlined bold text and, of course, a lot of design errors.
Now such tasks before me occur rarely - not like during the times of work as a webmaster - but they still happen. Anyway - is it possible in IT to do without the skills of working with texts? Registration of documentation, articles, business letters, in the end, detailed comments - all this requires compliance with certain rules, which sometimes seem insignificant, but actually produce the same effect as errors in the code - do not allow to solve the problem.
... To simplify the work and speed up the task, I used the technology to the fullest - complex regular expressions, batch processing of files, pre-configured to clean the text from the garbage form, editors plugins to format the code - everything went into business. But every day it became more and more obvious that we are doing a double job - someone spent a lot of time to “fix” in the text, and now I bring it to its original state! Of course, it would be much easier to initially make the text cleaner.
I admit, at first I was angry and scolded those who gave me texts for placement, on what the world stands. It would seem that it can be easier than writing neatly, competently and succinctly, without abusing the capabilities of visual editors, and at least occasionally re-reading what is written? In fact, of course, it is very difficult - otherwise why do so many people do this? Why do we all do it - to one degree or another? I think there are several main reasons for this - and none of them concern literacy as such.
It is easy to scold someone else's work, but I think many people noticed how their behavior changed when they found themselves in the role of creator. Of course, each letter is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and requires increased attention , without irony. We are afraid that people will miss important information and, as a result, they will not understand our brilliant plan, they will not buy the product, they will not use the service. As a rule, “copious excretions” produce the opposite effect - the very annoyance when we are forced to cut out hundreds of extra tags from the next copywriter or authorial creation or break our eyes on the blinking bold text in upper case. Therefore, you should learn to trust people at least a little:
Cutting the text into large chunks, you can go to a more subtle finish. And here comes the second problem, partly related to the first.
')
There are few programmers who would defend the right to consciously make mistakes in the syntax for the sake of observing aesthetic ideas - and this is not necessary, since the beauty of the code lies elsewhere. But with the Russian language is more complicated. It seems to many that “beauty” is, first of all, conspicuousness: brightness, size, contrast of the figure with the background and other figures. In fact, this type of attracting attention is peculiar to threats rather than pleasant incentives. Beauty, as a rule, is a manifestation of order and functionality. Therefore:
And here, too, there is one nuance - the use of inappropriate tools. Many have heard that centering the text on the eye with a lot of spaces or aligning the verses in the center is not quite correct, but the habits take their own - without seeing the code, it is not possible to understand the internal difference in the seemingly identical operations. Tab is indented, and four spaces are indented. A line break is when you press "Enter" and an indent appears, and the paragraph is the same. Invisible character? No, did not hear.
Therefore, it makes sense either to study the technical nuances of the text display, or to memorize a few simple rules :
Carrying out these simple recommendations, I believe, it will be much easier for us to properly convey our thoughts to other people. The reality is that you can not publish the text without breaking eggs, but you can minimize the damage - do not add too much, plan and arrange the blocks, use the right tools. And then even if the requirements for the design - or even the requirements of the Russian language - change, the text can be brought into line with them quickly and without additional costs and nerves.
Clean, of course, where they clean, but this is not a reason to throw papers at the janitor.
PS and here are a few articles on Habré that reveal the rules more fully:
Although, in my opinion, this is still for enthusiasts, print publications and static sites that are created once and for all. A lively updated website will sooner or later fall into the hands of a content manager working in Word and WYSIWYG editors, far from philology and typography, so it’s much easier and better at the level of official duties to give him design requirements that make it easier to follow up than to scold and demand to memorize the dictionary Dahl and gramota.ru.
Now such tasks before me occur rarely - not like during the times of work as a webmaster - but they still happen. Anyway - is it possible in IT to do without the skills of working with texts? Registration of documentation, articles, business letters, in the end, detailed comments - all this requires compliance with certain rules, which sometimes seem insignificant, but actually produce the same effect as errors in the code - do not allow to solve the problem.
... To simplify the work and speed up the task, I used the technology to the fullest - complex regular expressions, batch processing of files, pre-configured to clean the text from the garbage form, editors plugins to format the code - everything went into business. But every day it became more and more obvious that we are doing a double job - someone spent a lot of time to “fix” in the text, and now I bring it to its original state! Of course, it would be much easier to initially make the text cleaner.
I admit, at first I was angry and scolded those who gave me texts for placement, on what the world stands. It would seem that it can be easier than writing neatly, competently and succinctly, without abusing the capabilities of visual editors, and at least occasionally re-reading what is written? In fact, of course, it is very difficult - otherwise why do so many people do this? Why do we all do it - to one degree or another? I think there are several main reasons for this - and none of them concern literacy as such.
Author's enthusiasm
It is easy to scold someone else's work, but I think many people noticed how their behavior changed when they found themselves in the role of creator. Of course, each letter is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and requires increased attention , without irony. We are afraid that people will miss important information and, as a result, they will not understand our brilliant plan, they will not buy the product, they will not use the service. As a rule, “copious excretions” produce the opposite effect - the very annoyance when we are forced to cut out hundreds of extra tags from the next copywriter or authorial creation or break our eyes on the blinking bold text in upper case. Therefore, you should learn to trust people at least a little:
- Selected areas of the text should be significantly less than not selected. SEO copywriters will better tell you about the density of keywords in the text, and I would say that it is possible and even less. Attract attention only to places that are not obvious for a cursory reading: especially important terms within a block of text, new or incomprehensible words that need clarification, headings and controls, and links.
- The text layout principle follows from the previous one: use blocks. Group homogeneous text and headings, separate heterogeneous blocks and blocks for various purposes. Roughly speaking, the space between the end of the previous block and the heading of the next one should be larger than between the heading of the next and the next text. Incorrect or ignored - without blocking or with homogeneous delimiters between any blocks - the layout repeatedly deteriorates the readability and ease of navigation through the text.
- By the way, remember that only one block is important to many! Few people actually read great selling articles, but an assortment of goods or a bugfix code will undoubtedly attract attention simply because of its purpose. Therefore, we must give the reader the opportunity to go directly to the important. Use headlines. In the case of the web, use <h1> - <h5> depending on the importance and level of attachment of headings. What is characteristic, it’s very easy to map out the places for headings if you have correctly arranged the blocks - the first level heading will appear in front of all the text, the second level heading will separate the large parts from each other, and the smaller ones will already work inside.
Cutting the text into large chunks, you can go to a more subtle finish. And here comes the second problem, partly related to the first.
')
Not entirely relevant emotionality and embellishment
There are few programmers who would defend the right to consciously make mistakes in the syntax for the sake of observing aesthetic ideas - and this is not necessary, since the beauty of the code lies elsewhere. But with the Russian language is more complicated. It seems to many that “beauty” is, first of all, conspicuousness: brightness, size, contrast of the figure with the background and other figures. In fact, this type of attracting attention is peculiar to threats rather than pleasant incentives. Beauty, as a rule, is a manifestation of order and functionality. Therefore:
- The rules of the Russian language are primary before design and advertising considerations (which, paradoxically, can improve both the design and the advertising effect). The dot and comma are separated from the next word by a space. The dash is separated by spaces from two sides. The hyphen is not separated by spaces. Headers do not need points. A new line, block or sentence begins with a capital letter. However, typing words entirely in capital letters is inappropriate in nine out of ten cases, and most likely yours is just out of nine. No more than three dots or exclamation marks are put - and there are no two dots or exclamation marks as punctuation marks either.
- Lists are needed to group similar items related to a single grouping word. It is better to use numbered lists if the item number in the list matters: is one of the stages of the linear sequence of actions or, for example, describes objects sorted by a significant attribute. In other cases, you can use bulleted lists. A marker is not a point, but a tag that can only look like a point. Therefore, adding points to points in front does not create a list. Styling in the text list markers is not worth it in 9 out of 10 cases.
- Tables are needed to represent data that has more than one level of connectedness with other data. If the data can be presented in the form of lines or a list, it is best to do so. A table of two columns and two rows is most likely meaningless. Alignment, indents inside cells, fatness and other ways to change the appearance of a table should not be explicitly set; if you are preparing material for the web, everything will be done using classes. Use only structural tools: creating tables, rows and cells.
- Bold and italics are best applied to different elements, and you should not combine it on one element in nine out of ten cases.
- Quotes must be the same. These: "", such: "", or some other, but the same throughout the text. Then in the event of which they can at least be replaced by two regular expressions.
- Of course, it makes sense to write correctly, but, oddly enough, this is not the most important. Proper speech structure construction does more than strict spelling. Figuratively speaking, not specifying the value of the alt attribute in the img tag is not as bad as making a header with font-size: 48px.
And here, too, there is one nuance - the use of inappropriate tools. Many have heard that centering the text on the eye with a lot of spaces or aligning the verses in the center is not quite correct, but the habits take their own - without seeing the code, it is not possible to understand the internal difference in the seemingly identical operations. Tab is indented, and four spaces are indented. A line break is when you press "Enter" and an indent appears, and the paragraph is the same. Invisible character? No, did not hear.
Therefore, it makes sense either to study the technical nuances of the text display, or to memorize a few simple rules :
- For text orientation on the page in the horizontal plane there are three (or four) positions: on the left (the text is even left and arbitrary right), on the center (both edges are torn, but the center of the line is always in the center of the page), on the right (so write the headings of statements or, for example, signatures) and in width - both edges of the text are aligned by increasing some spaces inside the line.
- Two spaces between words is a mistake in nine out of ten cases. For a uniform distance from the edge of several lines in a row, it makes sense to use tabs - and visually it is much easier to control than dozens of spaces. The edge will be really smooth.
- It is better not to make a visual indent between blocks by translating blank lines. Non-text elements, as a rule, have parameters of vertical and horizontal indent, and in the text indents of more than one line are not needed in nine out of ten cases.
- The red line looks better in an array of dense uniform text, usually artistic. For heterogeneous or short text it is better to use vertical indents between paragraphs.
Carrying out these simple recommendations, I believe, it will be much easier for us to properly convey our thoughts to other people. The reality is that you can not publish the text without breaking eggs, but you can minimize the damage - do not add too much, plan and arrange the blocks, use the right tools. And then even if the requirements for the design - or even the requirements of the Russian language - change, the text can be brought into line with them quickly and without additional costs and nerves.
Clean, of course, where they clean, but this is not a reason to throw papers at the janitor.
PS and here are a few articles on Habré that reveal the rules more fully:
- Good typography recipes
- Making quotes on sites
- Layout hyphens, minuses, dashes and quotes
- Why is capitalized text difficult to read?
Although, in my opinion, this is still for enthusiasts, print publications and static sites that are created once and for all. A lively updated website will sooner or later fall into the hands of a content manager working in Word and WYSIWYG editors, far from philology and typography, so it’s much easier and better at the level of official duties to give him design requirements that make it easier to follow up than to scold and demand to memorize the dictionary Dahl and gramota.ru.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/185972/
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