From the course: Technical Writing: Quick Start Guides

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Use consistent formatting

Use consistent formatting

From the course: Technical Writing: Quick Start Guides

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Use consistent formatting

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- You may be the writer of your quick start guide but that's not your only role. You're the formatter of your guide too. So when it comes to the appearance of your guide, you're in charge. Being the formatter may not seem like a big responsibility, but it is. All the choices you make about how to format your guide, fonts, colors, columns, whether the bullets will be round or square, all those choices greatly affect how easy to read and how useful your guide will be. When it comes to formatting, the most important thing to remember is that formatting conveys meaning. It's not just decorative, so you don't make one bulleted item orange while all the others are black just because you feel like it. If you change the color of an item, it should be to convey additional meaning. Here's an example from a quick start guide on setting up an external hard drive. Can you tell why the writer made the third bullet blue? It's blue because it's a warning. It's advice about what not to do. I'm betting…

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