Technical writing
Use and Misuse of Graphics
by
Your Full Name
(Technical Writing Class)
Assignment 1
Instructor’s Name:
My Full Name (Dr. Nitaigour Premchand Mahalik)
(Due Date: Mention here)
Background
A lot of professional, technical writing contains graphics—drawings, diagrams, photographs, illustrations of all sorts, tables, pie charts, bar charts, line graphs, flow charts, and so on. Once you get the hang of putting graphics like these into your writing, you should consider yourself obligated to use graphics whenever the situation naturally would call for them. Unlike what you might fear, producing graphics is not such a terrible task—in fact, it's fun.
Introduction
Before getting into details on creating, formatting, and incorporating graphics, consider the types and their functions. You can use graphics to represent the following elements in your technical writing:
· Objects—If you're describing a fuel-injection system, you'll probably need a drawing or diagram of the thing. If you are explaining how to graft a fruit tree, you'll need some illustrations of how that task is done. Photographs, drawings, diagrams, and schematics are the types of graphics that show objects.
· Numbers—If you're discussing the rising cost of housing in Austin, you could use a table with the columns being for five-year periods since 1970; the rows could be for different types of housing. You could show the same data in the form of bar charts, pie charts, or line graphs. Tables, bar charts, pie charts, and line graphs are some of the principal ways to show numerical data.
· Concepts—If you want to show how your company is organized, the relationships of the different departments and officials, you could set up an organization chart-boxes and circles connected with lines that show how everything is hierarchically arranged and related. This would be an example of a graphic for a concept: this type depicts nonphysical, conceptual things and their relationships.
· Words—And finally graphics are used to depict words. You've probably noticed how textbooks put key definitions in a box, maybe with different color. The same can be done with key points or extended examples. Not the sexiest form of graphics, but it still qualifies, and it's good to keep in mind as a useful technique in certain situations.
Graphic organizers: A Graphics Tools
Graphic organizers guide learners’ thinking as they fill in and build upon a visual map or diagram. Graphic organizers are some of the most effective visual learning strategies for students and are applied across the curriculum to enhance learning and understanding of subject matter content. In a variety of formats dependent upon the task, graphic organizers facilitate students’ learning by helping them identify areas of focus within a broad topic, such as a novel or article. Because they help the learner make connections and structure thinking, students often turn to graphic organizers for writing projects. In summary,
1. Graphics add visual/aesthetic appeal to the information on the web page, helping to maintain viewer interest and attention
2. Help to create visual structure for information and links on the page
3. Communicate or explain ideas visually
Guidelines for effective use of web graphics
Graphics for purpose. They should enhance the design, structure, or informative content of the web page without distracting attention. As much as you may want to add an image to a page because it shows off some fancy new effect you learned in the graphics program, think first about whether it fits in or not. You may want to keep these types of graphics in your personal portfolio under the heading, “Cool Effects I Know in My Graphics Program.”
Graphics as viewers’ focus. Using visually strong graphic elements on a page can be useful in directing viewers' attention and providing structure for the page. Be careful, though. Strong graphic elements can also pull attention away from central content or compete with one another on the page. This results in the page appearing overly busy or cluttered and makes it difficult to read. Remember, if you attempt to emphasize everything then nothing ends up standing out.
Avoid repetitive use. These types of "eye catching" images may be attractive at first, but after the novelty wears off, they may cause viewers to lose patience with the site. While an animation of a dancing monkey may seem interesting and funny at first, over time it may become annoying and drive viewers away.
Avoid the use of graphics to convey text. While it may be tempting from a design standpoint to use images for textual information because of the greater number of design options such as font choices and text effects, graphic based text presents a variety of problems: Images of text can't be resized like true text, so users with poor vision are unable to resize it to meet their visual needs; images require much longer to download than text; users can't search for images of text using their browser's find feature; and search engines are better able to index websites that contain actual text, well-structured with HTML.
Graphics as textual alternatives. Remember that not all users are able to see the images on your web page. Whenever images are used, it is important to provide equivalent content or descriptions of the image in a textual format. The most common way this is done is to provide descriptive text using the ALT attribute. This is especially important where images are used as navigation buttons or links.
Sufficient contrast between the text and the background color. Design graphic elements so that users can easily distinguish the text from its background. Also, be sure to avoid color combinations (reds and greens for example) that color blind users will not be able to distinguish apart from one another.