Why is Consistency Important in Information Design?

When presenting information, you as a designer need to ensure that you are consistent in how you present your text. For example, you must be consistent in

• vocabulary and form of words,
• tone,
• format, and
• tense.

Consistency creates a professionalism on your document that shows that you have put thought into your work, that you know how to present the information, and that you pay attention to detail.

Vocabulary and Form of Words

Use consistent vocabulary—strong, accurate, definitive terms—in informative or instructional text so your readers know what to expect and are not guessing about a term. Too many synonyms can confuse your reader, and sometimes, synonyms are similar but not exact. Also, when using synonyms, you may run out of strong words and use trite synonyms—nice, great, strong, etc.—which damage your credibility through nonspecific language. Using synonyms also complicates your ability to apply an old/new pattern, which improves the flow of your narrative by creating natural transitions between sentences. (I address the old/new pattern in a previous blog post.)

Frequently, my students complain that using consistent vocabulary—using a term over and over in the text—sounds redundant and immature, as if the writer has a limited vocabulary. They may use pronouns (and sometimes, they create modifier issues by using vague or misplaced pronouns) in lieu of a term to create variance in the text. Variance is acceptable, but you must ensure that the reader can follow your thought process, and consistency in your vocabulary will help your reader.

Tone

Use a consistent tone in your text to present yourself professionally and to not distract your reader. If you begin with a formal tone, using technical words and a professional tone, and then change your tone or add "noise"—unanticipated humor, informal language, slang, inappropriate content (like a story in the middle of instructions—you damage your credibility and confuse your reader.

Format

Use a consistent format when presenting your information. Format is focused more on design elements—e.g., font type, size, bold/italics, and inclusion of rules under headings—but format helps the reader to navigate through the document, understand the hierarchy of the text (e.g., headings versus subheadings), and find information faster. Consistent format allows the reader to understand your organization and also makes your document appear more credible and professional. Have you ever seen a Web page that had headings in different colors or sizes? And if you noticed the inconsistency, did you create an opinion about the page or the writer? Format needs to be consistent (and aesthetically pleasing, a discussion beyond the scope of this post) so the reader can focus on what you are saying rather than on apparent errors in your format.

(For consistent format, use a cascading style sheet for Web pages or a template for your blog. You can also create a style sheet in Microsoft Word. These style sheets allow you to apply a previously established format rather than guessing each time you need to format text, an image, a caption, or another element of your document.)

Tense

Consistency in tense is necessary to accurately communicate when an action has happened, is happening, or will happen. Thus, consistent tenses affect the information that you share with your reader. American's struggle with verb tenses, probably because writers do not understand them. My students tell me that they get confused when we begin to talk about imperfect, conditional, perfect, past, present, future,... and they confuse "voice" with "tense."

Tense is related to time, so set your mind on a time and be consistent in presenting that time. APA style recommends that reference to authors is always in past tense because the writer has already published the intellectual property we are referencing. Keeping that in mind has helped me to use tense more consistently in my writing.

Also, focusing on the purpose of a particular part of a document—e.g., future for a timeline in a proposal, past in the reporting of a progress report, present in discussing opinion in a blog post—can help you keep your tense consistent.

Why are Style Guides SO Important?

A style guide is a document that you, the author, create to ensure that you are consistent throughout a document.

Needing a style guide

The document is organic—i.e., you add to it each time you identify an element in your document—a word, a source, a process, a design element, a format standard—that you will use later in the document and that you need to present consistently. For example, if you are writing about information design, do you write

• Web site,
• Website,
• website, or
• web site?

(As a medical writer, I often need to identify if the document I am writing refers to "health care" or "healthcare.")

Choosing a standard

Frequently, you think you will be consistent, but in different settings with different sources, you may change your style or begin to question what standard you were following. And you do not want to constantly go through the text to find certain standards so you can be consistent. A style guide helps you maintain that consistency by providing you with an offline document that you can reference for your established standards. The style guide becomes even more important if you are collaborating and need to provide the standards to other writers.

College students already know MLA

My students question me when I assign a style guide, but most of them have only been exposed to MLA style (through high school classes or freshman rhetoric), so they do not understand the need for a style guide or the uses of a style guide.

Once they begin to create their own documents—and I assign a 12-post blog for my information design class—they realize that being consistent is not always as easy as it sounds. Therefore, they create a style guide that enables me to know their personal style standards so I can reference their guides when I grade. I particularly need this to know how they are citing sources in their blogs, because I allow them to create their own citation styles.

Students need to learn other styles

Some of them choose to use APA or Wikipedia's style, but some create their own styles, and the style guide informs me of what standard the student has established.

In class, we use APA for citations, and we consider other documents (specifically Web sites and blogs) to analyze the designers' consistency. By using APA, the students learn to visit an already established style guide and apply the standards, paying attention to details and formatting per the prescribed guide.

In my engineering class, students use IEEE because the style is relevant to what they will use in the workplace and when they publish their findings. IEEE's style guide has numerous versions and contains inconsistencies, so students are instructed to choose a standard and use it throughout their documents. They are also taught how to work through the citation process as they write a collaborative research paper so they can accurately cite sources that another writer has referenced.

I use a style guide as the editorial assistant for Technical Communication Quarterly. We publish the style guide online so authors can reference the guide, but my job is to know the style guide and apply it to all articles before we publish. I have also used style guides when I have edited larger works, like medical textbooks.

Style guides help us be consistent

Style guides help us to be consistent, which helps our readers (We do not distract or confuse them.) and also helps us to present ourselves professionally, showing that we are attentive to detail.

How Can I Improve My Writing?

I frequently have students ask me, "How can I improve my writing?" What they frequently mean is "How can I make a better grade in your class?" But my answer is the same for both questions: practice and immerse yourself in good writing.

Practice

Remember your mother telling you to practice? Practice your catching skills. Practice the piano or horn. Practice your penmanship. Practice.

Practice is an effective way to strengthen a skill, particularly if you practice effectively. (Devlounge, 2009, gives tips on how to improve practice.) The secret to practice is that if you repeat an activity over and over again, you strengthen your skill at that activity. We know that practice helps us to learn and strengthen a skill; thus, we wrote our names over and over again, repeated our multiplication tables, and frequently use software that we are seeking to learn. "Practice makes perfect," as endurance athlete Bergland (2011) explains in his article, "No. 1 Reason Practice Makes Perfect."

Practice trains the brain. So as you learn to use the old/new pattern in your writing, practice that pattern in all of your technical writing: e.g., in class reports, in emails, in texts. As you learn how to identify passive and active voices, use active as often as you can.

Immerse Yourself in Good Writing

Imitatio means "imitation," and if you immerse yourself in good writing—i.e., read the works of great writers and imitate their styles—you will strengthen your writing skills as well. Therefore, read other writers' works and identify what those writers do well. Then apply those strengths to your writing.

In many classical classrooms, students study, memorize, and imitate the great writers—e.g., Plato, Socrates, Locke. Then, as students begin to express their own opinions or report information in their own way, they adapt the strengths of these great writers to their own writing. In the same way, find strong writers and imitate what you appreciate about their styles.

Imitation does not mean you are copying their works; instead, you are learning from them and applying what you learn to your own writing.

References

Bergland, C. (2011, October 13). No. 1 reason practice makes perfect. Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201110/no-1-reason-practice-makes-perfect

Devlounge. (2009, May 29). How to practice effectively to improve your skills. Retrieved from http://www.devlounge.net/strategy/practice-effectively-to-improve-skills

Why are Citations So Important?

Citations are important for three reasons:

• They provide credit for the originator of the intellectual property.
• They build a writer's credibility, accountability, and accuracy.
• They help you and the reader find sources that expand on the information related to what you cite.

Legally, we are required to give credit, but we as communicators and writers benefit from citations as well.

Credit the Source

When we cite our sources, we give credit to the creator for intellectual property (IP). IP is valuable and important in today's Internet-centered environment. IP includes ideas as well as material results of thought, such as music, art, writing, code, designs, logos, and other products of the creator's thought. Numerous lawsuits center around IP and involve copyright, trademark, and patent infringement. (For a recent list, see RFCExpress, 2012.)

You can protect yourself (and Vaughan-Nichols, 2011, has some ideas on how to protect yourself and your company) but you also must ensure that you don't infringe another creator's rights. Therefore, you must give credit when you use someone else's idea or words. You may NOT use IP in full (a full photo, piece of music, etc.) without written consent of the creator or unless the IP is in the public domain or your use is allowed by creative commons licensing (which I will address in a future post).

Build Your Credibility

Citing your sources is also valuable to build your credibility. If you provide a fact without providing sources, your audience may question you; however, if you provide sources for the information that you present, your audience realizes that you know what you are saying.

For example, on January 8, 2011, a man shot Senator Gabriella Giffords in the head (as reported in a story in the Huffington Post/AP, 2011), and the first reports we heard through the news and online were mixed: Did she die or didn't she? (Tenore, 2011, wrote a commentary on this topic.) Frequently, writers and reporters—sources of information—want to be the first to tell a story or share information, and if they do not carefully check and cite their sources, they damage their credibility. Citing your sources also makes you accountable for the information you share and ensures that if you share someone else's information, you are accurate.

Record Sources of Information

Finally, citations will help you and your reader go to sources of information so they can find your source and learn more about the topic about which you communicate. Many people use Wikipedia in this way: they go to a Wikipedia article to begin research and follow citations in the article to find more information. (This is an appropriate use for Wikipedia.)

References

Huffington Post/AP. (2011, January 8). Gabrielle Giffords shot: Congresswoman shot in Arizona. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/08/gabrielle-giffords-shot-c_n_806211.html

RFC Express. (2012). Your primary source for intellectual property lawsuits. Retrieved from http://www.rfcexpress.com

Tenore, M. J. (2011, January 10). Conflicting reports of Giffords' death were understandable, but not excusable. Retrieved from http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/113876/conflicting-reports-of-giffords-death-were-understandable-but-not-excusable

Vaughan-Nichols, S. (2011, December 28). The CIO's nightmare: Intellectual property lawsuits. Retrieved from http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/The-CIO-s-Nightmare-Intellectual-Property-Lawsuits/ba-p/1168