Guidelines for preparing your word document file

Most of the times we see that presentation wouldn’t be complete without giving the word document containing detailed information of various topics or issues discussed in the presentation. Due to the time factor or the limitations of a slide presentation, we may not be able to convey detailed information about the product/ services. In such case all the

information related to the product/ service including the Service level agreements (SLA’s) will be provided to the customer for review. Documents should be created in

such a way that it grabs the viewer’s attention. Documents would be big and run into a lot number of pages, hence we need to follow some guidelines so as to make them more appealing. So let’s take a look at common guidelines which should be followed while creating a word document.

a) Choose your content carefully

Since the documents has a lot of information per page and may run into 20-25 lines per page, there is every chance that the viewer will get lost while reading it. In order to make the document easy to understand it is very important that you choose only that content which is very important. Some of the guidelines are:-

 Choose the content carefully

 Try to put a concise summary point in the first page such that it gives necessary impetus for the viewers to read the entire document.

 You may highlight some of the problems the customer is facing in the first couple of pages. Like you may say most of the companies are facing the problem of low network speeds and are not able to carry out daily transactions effectively with increasing number of customers day-to-day. So what is the solution for this

problem? Then you can keep on continuing with your company solutions in the subsequent pages.

 Always give some information about your company and its key strengths in the first page.

 Give a suitable heading such that it reflects your objective of the word document

 Try to use a picture or table or a chart every couple of pages so that the document will be interesting enough to read

b) Select or create a document theme

A document theme will describe how the background of every page in the document looks like. It also deals with the style of border, header text and footer text in the document. Many a times the company will be having its own theme with its logo water marked at the center or top of every page. Some of the guidelines includes:-

 Choose the theme which suits your company

 You may have the same theme which you used for your PowerPoint slides so that the uniformity is maintained in terms of font selection, colours and graphics C) Maintain uniformity in the text

In the document if you have used the font size 16 and bold for the heading in the 1^st page. Then in any other pages if you want to keep a heading use the same font as used earlier in 1^st page. Some of the guidelines here include:-

 Make sure the all the main headings, sub headings, inner sections maintain the uniform font style and size within them as explained earlier. You may use font size 16 for main headings, 14 for sub headings, and 12 for the text in the sections and so on.

 Make sure the font used in the text of all the tables are same

 Make sure that font in all the flow charts are same

d) Use graphics to illustrate key points

Graphics are a great way of creating interest while reading the document. Some of the guidelines include:-

 Avoid using blurred images; always use clear images in the documents

 If you are taking the picture from some other source, clearly give the reference below it

 The text in the picture should be readable enough

 Avoid using bright colours in the chart, especially in a pie-chart - it would make the text difficult to read

 Make sure the size and the colour formats looks similar for most of the charts in the document

e) Other general guidelines

Some of the other general guideline which we would follow for creating a document include:-

 Make use of an appendix if you have any supporting information to your content which can be put at the end of the document.

 Make use of a footer and header in the document

 Make sure the header will include the company name and logo and footer includes the page number.

 When the document is ready make sure that you see the print preview to get to how it look when printed

 Avoid breaking of tables and flow charts into multiple pages, always try to keep them in a single page unless they are very lengthy

 If you are copying some text or table or a chart from other document and the font is changing, try “past special” instead of paste in the document. This command will preserve the text style and font while coping.

 Finally when the document is ready make sure that you run the spelling check and clear all the language and spelling errors.

 Give the document for review to you team members and your manager and get their approval

 Get a copy printed and make sure the colours in the pictures, charts and any other graphics are readable

 The list of guidelines is not exhaustive and you may follow some others which may help you in creating an effective and efficient documents and PowerPoint or paper slides.

SAQ 2

1) Explain various presentation design issues while using animations and transitions in the slides.

2) Explain the guidelines which you will follow while selecting the content for your word document

3) Explain the uses of video and audio in your presentation