memoir

Time and time again, questions come up about the design of a research paper. Of course, the first thing to check is whether the department or professor in question has published any guidelines. But there are some things that never make it into these guidelines because they are either too general – i.e. they apply not only to research papers, but have to be learned, anyway – or too specific – i.e. the people writing the guidelines didn't think of this particular scenario. In these cases, it is good to have some general design principles to stick to.

In her book The Non-Designer’s Design Book, Robin Williams formulates four such principles, which can be applied to a very wide range of design problems. The book does not make a very good first impression – the cover (imho) looks quite cheap, the contents seem to consist of a collection of examples, and even the principles seem to be just common sense. And in a way they are, because if they are not applied, you can see that something doesn't look good; but you can't quite put your finger on it. This is where it helps to consciously go over these four simple priciples. And it is a good idea to keep them in mind every time you do any formatting.

The principles are easily remembered with the help of an acronym which, unfortunately, means exactly the opposite of what you want to get at the end: CRAP.

Keep in mind that I only give a few very specific examples below, but that the principles can be applied in many more situations. And also that the principles are interconnected and need to be well balanced.

Contrast

Don't use similar elements. Either they are the same and they should look the same, or they are different, in which case the reader should be able to see the difference.

A very simple example: Headings should be recognisable as such on first sight; don't just make them one point bigger than the body text. Make them bold and at least two points bigger. And mark different things in different ways; don't use italics to mean both “important” and “linguistic example”.

A problem that often arises when using phonetic or other special symbols: The font you use for your body text does not provide these symbols. What a lot of people do is to take these and only these symbols from another font, which results in weird-looking text. So why not set all the phonetic examples (or formulas or whatever you are typing) in that special font? That makes much more sense than having only all schwas or all Greek letters etc. in a different typeface.

Repetition

Repeating elements shows the reader that they are still reading the same work.

For example, if you use graphics and only some of them have borders, you should either remove those borders or add borders to the other graphics. If you have to adjust the spacing of a list, for instance, because you want to fit it on the page, consider adjusting all other lists in the same way, so the one list doesn't look out of place. And, again, be consistent with how you mark different things: if you choose to print the stressed syllable in an example in boldface, stick to it; don't mark the stressed syllable in another example with an accent (I've seen people do that).

Alignment

Don't put anything on the page arbitrarily. Everything should be aligned with something else.

If your paper has a header or a footer, they should be aligned with the main text area. If you use figures or tables, their horizontal alignment shouldn't be whatever the software chooses to do. Make sure they are all aligned with the text in the same way.

Proximity

Related items should be closer to each other on the page.

Don't leave less space before a new heading than after it; the heading belongs to the following text. Make sure captions are closer to their figures or tables than to the body text, so they can immediately be associated with them.

Avoid so-called orphans, i.e. isolated lines created when paragraphs begin on the last line of a page, and widows, i.e. isolated lines created when paragraphs end on the first line of a new page.