FranklinCovey® Style Guide™: For Business and Technical Communication, Fifth Edition

Model Documents

Using Model Documents

The following models illustrate both effective document design and the best in current business and technical English.

As you survey these models, you will notice that they all use headings, informative subject lines, lists, short paragraphs, color and, whenever appropriate, graphics. The goal of these emphasis techniques is to make the information in these documents 100 percent unambiguous to any and all readers.

This goal is, of course, not achievable. Not all readers read accurately or consistently. Still, writers of documents must do everything they can to assist readers both to discover accurately the information in a document and then to remember this information for later use.

Well-designed documents ...