Rough Draft of Final Project – Proposal

Markel, M. (2015). Technical communication (11th ed.).  Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's.

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CreAte iNFOrMAtiVe heADerS AND FOOterS

Headers and footers help readers understand and navigate your document, and they help establish your credibility. You want readers to know that they are reading an official document from your organization and that it was cre- ated by professionals. Figure 11.23 shows a typical website header, and Figure 11.24 shows a typical footer.

FIGurE 11.23 Website header Notice that a header in a website provides much more accessing information than a header in a printed document. This header enables readers to search the site, as the header on almost every site does, but it also includes other elements that are particularly important to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. For instance, there is a link to drug trials that visitors might want to join, and there is a prominent link for donating to the foundation. Reprinted by permission of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Grand Central Station, P.O. Box 4777, New York, NY 10163-4777. Tel: 1-800-708-7644 Copyright © 2013 Michael J. Fox Foundation. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Sitemap

FIGurE 11.24

Website Footer

The top line of the footer contains the contact information for the site.

The bottom line contains the copyright notice, as well as links to the privacy policy, the terms and conditions for using the site, and a site map.

This simply designed footer presents all the links as text. Readers with impaired vision who use text-to-speech devices will be able to understand these textual links; they would not be able to understand graphical links. Reprinted by permission of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

helP reADerS NAViGAte the DOCUMeNt

One important way to help readers navigate is to create and sustain a consistent visual design on every page or screen. Make the header, footer, background color or pattern, typography (typeface, type size, and color), and placement of the navigational links the same on every page. That way, read- ers will know where to look for these items.

Making Your Document Easy To Navigate

Follow these five suggestions to make it easy for readers to find what they want in your document.

include a site map or index. a site map, which lists the pages on the site, can be a graphic or a textual list of the pages, classified according to logical categories. an index is an alphabetized list of the pages. Figure 11.25 shows a portion of a site map.

FIGurE 11.25 Site Map

For large websites, help your readers by organizing the site map rather than just presenting an alphabetical list of the pages. In this portion of a site map, Micron Technology classifies the pages in logical categories to help visitors find the pages they seek

use a table of contents at the top of long pages. if your page extends for more than a couple of screens, include a table of contents—a set of links to the items on that page—so that your readers do not have to scroll down to find the topic they want. Tables of contents can link to information farther down on the same page or to information on separate pages. Figure 11.26 shows an excerpt from the table of contents at the top of a frequently asked questions (FaQ) page.

help readers get back to the top of long pages. if a page is long enough to justify a table of contents, include a “Back to top” link (a textual link or a button or icon) before the start of each new chunk of information.

include a link to the home page on every page. This link can be a simple “Back to home page” textual link, a button, or an icon.

include textual navigational links at the bottom of the page. if you use buttons or icons for links, include textual versions of those links at the bottom of the page. readers with impaired vision might use special software that reads the information on the screen. This software interprets text only, not graphics.