Technology and Communications
B. TECHNOLOGY AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS
All organisations – whether public or private, manufacturing or service, etc. – rely heavily on the written word as their main means of communication. Increasingly, the method of producing those written words is being computerised and this offers immense possibilities by way of enhancing messages and, thereby, making them more effective.
The technology has made a tremendous difference to the range of opportunities available to improve the production and presentation of written communication. It is now easy to produce drafts and correct them quickly, and to include graphics, colour, different letter fonts, etc. all within the one document.
However, these possibilities must be seen as what they are – tools to enhance the work produced. No matter how sophisticated the presentation of any document, there still remains the need for careful thought and preparation – for precision, clarity and structure – and this cannot be undertaken by the technology itself. Underlying effectiveness are the same principles of good written communication that we have seen previously in respect of letters, etc.
Moreover, effectiveness in the use of the enhancements available is itself based on principles of good practice.
In the following sections, we shall review some of the ways in which computer applications can help to enhance the presentation of written materials. We shall also consider some of the pitfalls.
Word Processing
Most written documentation produced in modern businesses is prepared by the use of word processing applications. It is now common for all individuals at the workplace to have their own desktop
computer and to be expected to produce their own letters, memoranda, etc. – rather then sending them to a central “pool“ for preparation. The ability to use a word processing application is, therefore, a basic skill required in many organisations today.
Word processing applications are computer programs used to create and print written documents.
Once text has been input to the document, the program allows for any changes – correcting mistakes, adjusting the layout, deleting sections, moving blocks of text, etc. – to be made quickly and easily.
One of the outcomes of this is that written materials often go through several drafts before the document is finalised. Far from speeding up the process of communication, it can in fact slow it down! This also gives rise to the explosion of paper that has accompanied the introduction of word processing into organisations – rather than the promised paperless office. There are a number of obvious inefficiencies built into this process which should be minimised. Care should be taken to ensure that redrafting is kept to a minimum – aim for just a first draft and a final version.
There are many different types of word processing application available, although the two main programmes used on PCs are Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect. Most of these packages have a
range of features which go a long way beyond the simple input and editing of text. Whilst most of these features are of a very specialist nature, certain elements are commonly used in business communication.
(a) Templates and boilerplates
These are features which standardise the style and content of business documents.
Templates provide a pre-designed framework for the insertion of text into a document, such as a letter or memorandum. They set out the margins, position of text on the page, font size and style, etc. which is applicable to the particular document. This can be important in preparing, for example, letters to be printed onto pre-printed stationery containing the company’s name, address and details, etc. As we have seen previously, letters in particular are important in forming an impression of an organisation, and it is not uncommon for a great deal of time and expense to be put into the design of stationery, including the way in which the words appear on the page.
Most organisations use standardised documents to some extent. These are usually letters, but may be other documents such as agenda, which contain the same information for all the recipients and/or need to be prepared over and over again. The standard text is usually personalised with particular details applicable to the individual recipient (name, address, etc.) or applicable to the particular occasion, such as an individual meeting.
The standard text is called boilerplate text.
There has been a move away from the heavy use of completely standardised letters
commonplace only a few years ago. People are no longer happy receiving materials which do not apply in full to their own particular circumstances. As a result, boilerplate text is often provided as a series of optional paragraphs each containing different text suitable for common specific incidences. The development of mailmerge facilities also allows increasing amounts of personal detail to be included.
(b) Mailmerge
Mail merge is the facility to automatically add personal details to a document. The personal information is drawn from a database held elsewhere within the computer.
The technique works by inserting special “fields“ into the main document, into which the personal information will be placed. These fields are given names which correspond to the field names in a database containing details of the recipients. The database may be specially prepared for a particular mailing, or may be an existing database within the organisation.
You will probably be familiar with the use of mailmerge facilities for inserting names and addresses onto letters, and possibly the insertion of other details such as account balances or payments, etc. However, increasingly sophisticated information can be added from large data files, including locations, dates of previous correspondence, contact names and even short phrases appropriate to the individual.
(c) Editing facilities
Word processing packages offer a wide range of facilities to edit the text once you have keyed it in.
It is possible to select individual words, groups of words or whole paragraphs and delete them, move them to a different position in the document or copy them for insertion elsewhere or even in another document. It is also possible to paste copied text or graphics into the document (either from a different position in the same document or from an entirely separate document).
The whole document can be searched to find particular words and, if wanted, to replace them by different words.
The whole document can also be automatically checked for spelling mistakes or against particular forms of grammar. You need to be careful about the use of a spell checker. It only detects spelling mistakes, so a word that is incorrectly spelt but the incorrect spelling forms another correctly spelt word would not be detected – for example, typing
“then” or “thank” when you meant to type “than “. This means that you always need to read through and check your work yourself.
Finally, it is possible to obtain certain statistics about the whole document – for example, number of words, time spent editing, etc.
(c) Formatting
Most word processing applications provide a wide range of features for formatting the
appearance of the text on the page. There is often a strong temptation to make excessive use of these with the most inappropriate results. Remember, though, the maxims we stressed earlier in the course about keeping communications clear and simple. The objective in using any
enhancement is to aid the clarity of the message. They should be used, therefore, to underpin structure and emphasis, not just for effect.
Formatting can be applied to either words and phrases or to a whole paragraph.
Words and phrases
Individual words or phrases can be formatted by applying different fonts or font enhancements to them.
Fonts are the style of the letters as they appear on the printed page. Most word processing applications offer a large choice of different fonts – some a bewildering range. However, it is rare for a document to need more than one font, or at the most two (with a different one being used, perhaps, for a main heading).
Structure and emphasis can be enhanced through the use of different font sizes and through applying bold or italic characteristics to words or phrases. Headings in both letters and reports are invariably emboldened. A hierarchy of headings can be given visual emphasis by the use of different sizes, with the size reducing from the first level headings to the lowest level. (However, it is rare for there to be a need for anything greater than a one or two point difference between the largest heading and the size of the main text.)
Paragraphs
Apart from applying styles to the characters on the page, it is possible to format how each paragraph appears. Again, it is important to use this feature carefully and consistently to support the clarity of the communication. In many organisations, the paragraph style – position on the page, alignment, etc. – will be defined by the templates used for particular types of document.
The main formatting features include:
(i) Alignment – running either from the left hand margin or to the right hand margin, centred between the margins (which is often used for main headings) or “justified“
where the text is aligned precisely to both the left and right hand margins, with some compensatory adjustments to the spacing between words.
(ii) Indentation – whereby the left (or right) hand margin for a particular paragraph can be set further in than the page margins, one particular feature being the
“hanging indent“ where the indentation is not applied to the first line (as in these paragraphs).
(iii) Tab stops – whereby text can be consistently aligned at particular intervals across the page by the use of the “tab“ key on the keyboard. Tab stops are set at specified measurements from the left hand margin and may be set to align text running from
the left at the tab stop, to the right at the tab stop, centred around it, or at a decimal point (for figures). (Setting out large amounts of text or figures in tabular form may be more easily achieved by using the “table“ feature of the word processing application.)
(iv) Bullets – the insertion of a symbol before the paragraph, used to give emphasis and pick out individual points in a list.
(v) Numbering – the automatic numbering of paragraphs which follow each other, creating a numbered list.
Working with Graphics
There is often a need to present information graphically in documents, as well as in oral presentations.
We shall consider some of the basic rules for using visual enhancements in this way in the next unit.
Here we shall briefly consider how the technology may be used to produce them.
(a) Drawing
Simple line diagrams with text can be produced in the main word processing applications.
These have features which enable straight and curved lines of different widths (with or without arrowheads), rectangles and circles to be drawn. The latter two shapes can usually be filled with a variety of shadings or even colour (if you have a colour printer).
More complex drawings can be produced in specialist drawing applications like CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator. These are professional graphics packages although they are relatively easy to use. There are other, less comprehensive, applications available which will meet the
requirements of most self-drawn diagrams.
The process of transferring material from one application (say, CorelDraw) into another (say, WordPerfect) is called importing. Most modern word processing applications support this.
Many also support a form of transfer known as embedding. Under this, a link is formed between the two files such that if the item that has been embedded is changed in either of the applications, it is automatically updated in the other application.
(b) Charts
Numerical information is invariably easier to assimilate if it is presented graphically – in the form of graphs, bar-charts, pie-charts, etc.
Again, the main word processing applications have the facility to produce such charts from tables of figures. However, it is often the case that the information is held on a spreadsheet elsewhere. Spreadsheets also have the facility to produce charts of varying types from selected data, which can then be imported or embedded into the written text.
(c) Clip Art
Many applications provide libraries of images which can be imported into documents as illustrations. Such libraries of images are also available to buy separately. It is possible, therefore, to access a very wide range of pictures under just about any subject under the sun and to use them to “jazz up“ your work.
The problem with this is that most of these clip art images are of low artistic quality and look exactly like what they are – cheap and cheerful pictures, often in the form of cartoons. It is highly doubtful that these enhance the professional presentation of written documents.
Desktop Publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is specialist software used for integrating text and graphics on a page. It essentially a “page make-up” tool, rather than an advanced form of word processing. Thus, it is less concerned with the editing of the text or the creation of the graphics (both of which are available in DTP, but not as extensively as in specialist wp or graphics software). Rather, it provides the facility to
place paragraphs of text and graphics in precise locations on the page, and to format the text and, to a lesser extent, the graphics as well.
This makes it ideal software to use for the preparation of newspapers, magazines, brochures, notices, etc. – anything where text and graphics need to be mixed in a complex way. It is also possible to specify various page sizes and constructions, allowing folding layouts to be adopted.
Electronic Publishing
This refers to the way in which documents of any description are produced and published for their audience to read entirely through computers.
The way in which documents used to be published, and still are in many circumstances, was for a
“master” page or pages to be produced on paper – either from a word processor or DTP package, or by a typist or designer/artist. This would then be used by a printer to copy onto the pages of the final publication, producing as many pages were necessary, in a similar way to photocopying. In the newspaper and magazine industry, there was an intermediary stage where the complex designs of the pages were converted into metal plates to be used on the large scale printing presses.
Electronic publishing techniques have changed this completely. There are three ways in which this can be done:
by sending the word processing or DTP file to a printer who will then print the document on paper direct from the electronic file;
by saving the document file onto a CD-ROM, thus allowing the reader to open the file on their own PC and read it there; or
by making the document available to be read on the Internet – either as a web page or as a file that can be opened on a web page and/or downloaded to be read on a computer off-line.
The effect of electronic publishing is that the document can be reproduced as many times as are necessary with no loss of quality and appears exactly as the originator intended it. It has also speeded up the process of preparing documents for print and reduced the cost. There has, therefore, been an explosion in the amount of material widely available, the complexity of design and the quality of production. This can be seen clearly in the magazine market.
Web Design
It is not our intention here to go into the design and preparation of web pages and web sites – which are the domain, in business at least, of professional designers – but merely to note two features of their construction.
The purpose of web sites and web pages is to communicate. They are a means of conveying a message and should, there, follow the principles of effective communication that we have stressed throughout. They should be prepared with a clear view of the purpose of the
communication and be structured to facilitate use and understanding on the part of the reader.
Each page should deal with one message.
There are many bad examples of web design on the Internet. These are mainly the result of these principles being ignored and the pages being made unnecessarily complicated by overuse of design features and/or covering too many ideas.
It is normal to link pages together by the use of “hyperlinks”. These are words, phrases or icons on the screen which, when you click on them with a mouse, send the reader to a different page. This may be a different page on the same web site, in which case the hyperlinks enable the reader to access different parts of the site in the way that he/she wants, or it may take the reader to a completely different site. There are two reasons that the links may take the reader to a different site:
(i) to access related information which it is thought may be of interest to the reader; or
(ii) to take the reader to the site of a company which has paid to advertise on the first site – for example, many on-line magazines contain links to sites advertising or offering for sale products which may interest the readers of those magazines.