SAS For Dummies

Chapter 10

Making It Pretty: Controlling Your Output

In This Chapter

Adding some style to your report

Painting your own custom styles

More than just a pretty face: Making your styles mean something

The demise of plain text? Not even close!

If you’ve ever read a badly formatted report — the ones that use single spacing between lines, with too-small 7 point (pt) text, quarter-inch margins, and 15 different fonts — you know that the aesthetics and appearance of a report can be almost as important as the content. If the formatting is bad enough, people might not want to read it. In fact, some organizations divide the job of report creation among different people: a report writer and report formatter, for example. With the techniques presented in this chapter, you can master both jobs (after which you should lobby to receive both salaries).

Perhaps your report needs to comply with a corporate standard for size, colors, and typefaces. Or you might be a finicky author who wants to ensure that the report is as pleasing to the eye as it is accurate and informative. Using effective formatting ...